NASA has lost a spacecraft around Mars. Is MAVEN gone for good?

A pioneering spacecraft has gone missing around Mars, and NASA says the mission is probably unrecoverable. 

The first sign of trouble came in December, when the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) orbiter passed behind the red planet and then failed to establish contact when it should have reappeared. Now, NASA reports that efforts to track down and regain control of the spacecraft have failed and are “very unlikely” ever to succeed. 

This is the first time NASA has accidentally, physically lost a spacecraft orbiting around another planet. A previous Mars mission called Mars Global Surveyor ended in 2007 due to a software malfunction, but the spacecraft still remained in its planned orbit. Thankfully, neither it nor MAVEN ran into trouble before they could fulfill their main mission: MAVEN was designed to last only two years, but has been operating for over a decade.

Still, losing MAVEN would be a significant setback for planetary science. The mission is dedicated to watching how Mars, under bombardment by high-energy particles from the Sun, sheds its atmosphere to space. This dramatic process is one of the main reasons Mars changed from a temperate planet of lakes and rivers into a barren, bleak desert. MAVEN offers a window into this past, showing us what kinds of worlds throughout the galaxy might suffer similar fates. 

Other missions rely on MAVEN, too. The orbiter acts as a telecommunications relay for NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers, helping channel instructions and data between them and Earth. Three other Mars orbiters also perform this service, but two of those spacecraft are over 20 years old, and one is expected to run out of fuel this year.

An ominous silence

No one has heard a deliberate communications signal from MAVEN since Dec. 4, when the orbiter passed behind Mars from Earth’s perspective. Afterward, though, engineers discovered fragments of a transmission from one of MAVEN’s ongoing science experiments. The broadcast hinted the probe had moved off its planned orbit and begun spinning in an unexpected way. 

That would explain why efforts to find MAVEN have failed. NASA has even instructed Curiosity to aim its camera at the sky in hopes of spotting MAVEN overhead — twice — but neither time was the spacecraft where it should have been.  

Unfortunately, this incident comes at one of the worst possible times. The Sun was aligned perfectly between Earth and Mars for the first half of January, blocking all communications with spacecraft there. Though NASA is able to try contacting MAVEN again now, Louise Prockter, director of NASA’s planetary science division, recently stated that it looked “very unlikely” they would be able to recover the mission.

What comes next

If MAVEN’s mission is declared over, other spacecraft slated for Mars could help pick up where it leaves off. NASA’s ESCAPADE probes launched last year to study how Mars loses its atmosphere to space, though the low-cost mission is small compared to MAVEN. The U.S. Congress has also funded a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter that could launch as early as 2028.

Neither of these missions would fully replace MAVEN’s scientific legacy. MAVEN has revealed how Mars responds to solar storms, explored what sort of radiation future crewed missions to Mars may one day contend with, and mapped the red planet’s auroras and winds. The mission has built our most detailed picture yet of how and why Mars lost nearly all of its atmosphere.

If MAVEN can somehow be recovered, it has enough fuel to keep exploring Mars for at least another four years. No matter what happens, though, nothing can change the discoveries MAVEN has already made. The mission has been a spectacular success. It has taught us not only about how Mars lost its atmosphere, but how that process might unfold on potentially habitable worlds across the Cosmos.