NASA Loses Contact with MAVEN Mars Orbiter After Anomaly Caused Unexpected Rotation During Occultation

NASA declared the $582 million MAVEN orbiter unrecoverable on Wednesday after the spacecraft failed to reestablish contact following a scheduled occultation behind Mars on December 6, 2025. Mike Moreau, MAVEN project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said the last successful communication occurred on December 6 of 2025.

The spacecraft and all subsystems were nominal when it entered the 20- to 30-minute pass behind the planet, and there were no indications of problems in the week prior.

When MAVEN emerged from behind Mars, the Deep Space Network detected no signal. Commands were sent in the blind to restart the flight computer, but all efforts to reestablish communication were unsuccessful and no telemetry or signal has been received since December 6. MAVEN was launched on November 18, 2013, and braked into orbit around Mars in September 2014.

Originally designed for one year of operations, the mission was repeatedly extended and delivered 11 years of data on the Martian atmosphere. Shannon Curry, the principal investigator at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said one of the mission's most exciting discoveries used 11 years of MAVEN data to observe an atmospheric escape process called sputtering for the first time on any planet.

Charged particles crash into the upper atmosphere and splash out the neutral atmosphere, a process Curry said has been a dominant escape mechanism for billions of years.

MAVEN also relayed signals from NASA's rovers Curiosity and Perseverance. Three other Mars orbiters provide similar communications relay service. NASA set up an anomaly review board in February to investigate the loss.

MAVEN does not normally rotate except for periodic orientation changes for science, communications, and power. At the observed rotation rate, normal communications likely would not have been possible and the solar arrays would have been unable to generate sufficient power, draining the batteries.

NASA will make no additional attempts to regain contact. The spacecraft is expected to remain in the same orbit around Mars for at least the next 50 to 100 years. Curry said leading the team has been a privilege and an honor and that the team worked tirelessly on operating the spacecraft and delivering exceptional science.