16.12.2025
MAVEN, NASA
NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) mission team, in partnership with the agency’s Deep Space Network, continues recovery activities after losing contact with the spacecraft on Dec. 6. To date, attempts to reestablish contact with the spacecraft have not been successful.
Although no spacecraft telemetry has been received since Dec. 4, the team recovered a brief fragment of tracking data from Dec. 6 as part of an ongoing radio science campaign. Analysis of that signal suggests that the MAVEN spacecraft was rotating in an unexpected manner when it emerged from behind Mars. Further, the frequency of the tracking signal suggests MAVEN’s orbit trajectory may have changed. The team continues to analyze tracking data to understand the most likely scenarios leading to the loss of signal. Efforts to reestablish contact with MAVEN also continue.
NASA is also working to mitigate the effect of the MAVEN anomaly on surface operations for NASA’s Perseverance and Curiosity rovers. Four orbiters at Mars, including MAVEN, relay communications to and from the surface to support rover operations. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey, and ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter all remain operational. For the next two weeks of scheduled surface operations, NASA is arranging additional passes from the remaining orbiters, and the Perseverance and Curiosity teams have adjusted their daily planning activities to continue their science missions.
Quelle: NASA
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Update: 17.12.2025
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Quelle: AMSAT-DL
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Update: 25.12.2025
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NASA Works MAVEN Spacecraft Issue Ahead of Solar Conjunction
NASA is continuing efforts to recontact its MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft, which was last heard from on Dec. 6. In partnership with NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN), the MAVEN team has sent commands for spacecraft recovery and is monitoring the network for a spacecraft signal.
The MAVEN team also continues to analyze tracking data fragments recovered from a Dec. 6 radio science campaign. This information is being used to create a timeline of possible events and identify likely root cause of the issue. As part of that effort, on Dec. 16 and 20, NASA’s Curiosity team used the rover’s Mastcam instrument in an attempt to image MAVEN’s reference orbit, but MAVEN was not detected. Additional analysis will continue, but planned monitoring will be affected by the upcoming solar conjunction.
Mars solar conjunction – a period when Mars and Earth are on opposite sides of the Sun – begins Monday, Dec. 29, and NASA will not have contact with any Mars missions until Friday, Jan. 16. Once the solar conjunction window is over, NASA plans to resume its efforts to reestablish communications with MAVEN.
Quelle: NASA
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Update: 4.12.2026
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A NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars may be dead
For nearly a month, NASA has been scrambling to make contact with a spacecraft in orbit around Mars that abruptly fell silent.
The space agency lost communication with the MAVEN probe (short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) on Dec. 6, and efforts to re-establish a connection have been futile. Based on bits of data received that day, mission controllers think the probe was spinning unexpectedly.
NASA now has to wait until Jan. 16 before it can again try to revive MAVEN, because Mars and Earth have been on opposite sides of the sun since Monday, resulting in a prolonged communications blackout.
Overall, it’s not looking promising for one of NASA’s workhorse missions.
Since the MAVEN spacecraft entered orbit around Mars in 2014, it has been studying the red planet’s upper atmosphere, including a plasma layer known as the ionosphere, and investigating how and why Mars has been losing its atmosphere over billions of years. The spacecraft has also been instrumental in relaying communications between two rovers on the surface of Mars, Curiosity and Perseverance, and Earth.
NASA hasn’t been able to reach MAVEN since it experienced what the agency called a “loss of signal” with ground stations on Earth on Dec. 6. At the time, the spacecraft was orbiting behind Mars, so the signal loss was routine and expected, as Mars always blocks MAVEN from phoning home during the maneuver. This time, however, when the probe re-emerged from behind the red planet, NASA could not pick up any signals from it.
NASA said it was “investigating the anomaly” in a statement on Dec. 9 but provided few details. Mission controllers reported that all of MAVEN’s subsystems had been working normally before it passed behind Mars.
In an update about a week later, NASA said no transmissions had been received from MAVEN since Dec. 4, but that engineers had recovered a brief fragment of tracking data from Dec. 6.
What they found was troubling: “Analysis of that signal suggests that the MAVEN spacecraft was rotating in an unexpected manner when it emerged from behind Mars,” NASA officials said in a statement.
The space agency has been using a global array of giant radio antennas, known as the Deep Space Network, to send commands to MAVEN and monitor for any incoming signals. On Dec. 16 and 20, NASA tried snapping photos of MAVEN in orbit from the surface of Mars, using an instrument aboard the agency’s Curiosity rover.
At the same time, mission controllers are closely analyzing the last fragments of tracking data recovered. NASA said on Dec. 23 that it was attempting to piece together a timeline of events to figure out what went wrong. NASA did not provide additional details in a request for comment and referred NBC News to the agency’s update on Dec. 23.
The MAVEN mission was originally designed to last just two years, but it has been operating continuously for more than a decade. In 2024, NASA celebrated the probe’s 10th anniversary orbiting Mars.
By studying the process of atmospheric loss on Mars, MAVEN was helping scientists get a clearer picture of the planet’s past and present climate and how it transformed from a potentially habitable world with liquid water on its surface to the cold and barren planet that it is today.
The spacecraft is one of three that NASA currently has in orbit around Mars. The space agency also operates the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which launched in 2005, and Mars Odyssey, which lifted off in 2001.
Quelle: NBC NEWS