NASA has started to lose hope of recovering its troubled MAVEN Mars orbiter. During a recent meeting, agency officials reportedly said that teams are still working to reestablish communications with the orbiter, which went silent around December 6, but success seems “very unlikely.”
NASA had suspended all communications with its active missions due to the solar conjunction – a period when Earth and Mars are on the opposite sides of the Sun. During this time, communications with orbiters and rovers are suspended because the interference by the Sun can corrupt radio signals by the sender and the receiver. In a statement, NASA said that it would not have any contact with its missions until January 16.
‘It’s looking very unlikely’: NASA
During a meeting of the Small Bodies Assessment Group on January 14, Louise Prockter, director of NASA’s planetary science division, said per SpaceNews – “We will start looking again, but at this point it’s looking very unlikely that we are going to be able to recover the spacecraft.”
In mid-December 2025, NASA said that it lost contact with MAVEN after it emerged from behind Mars. An analysis of tracking data suggested it “was rotating in an unexpected manner” after straying away from its orbit. In a December 23 update, the agency revealed that it tried to track MAVEN from the ground using Curiosity rover’s Mastcam instrument but it was not detected. “Additional analysis will continue, but planned monitoring will be affected by the upcoming solar conjunction,” NASA said at the time.
Short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, the MAVEN mission launched in November 2013 and has served as NASA’s eyes on Mars beside the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the 2001 Mars Odyssey – the longest active mission on the red planet. Besides studying the Martian atmosphere, MAVEN serves as a data relay platform between Earth and other missions like Perseverance and Curiosity rovers.
Until MAVEN comes online, NASA is relying on other orbiters to support surface operations by scheduling their additional passes over the rovers.
MAVEN received a fifth extension of its mission in September 2022 to 2025. According to Space.com, NASA’s team estimates that it has enough fuel to remain in orbit until at least 2030.
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