The Maven spacecraft, which spent more than a decade orbiting the planet, lost signal on December 6, 2025
The announced this Wednesday (June 3, 2026) that with the Maven spacecraft, which spent more than a decade orbiting Mars. The probe lost signal when passing behind the planet on December 6, 2025.
According to Mike Moreau, Maven project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, an agency review board is looking for the reason for the failure. NASA’s theory is that the probe’s batteries were likely exhausted, causing the end of communications.
Moreau said Maven did not rotate in orbit normally, but emerged from the pass behind Mars spinning at 2.7 revolutions per minute. The spacecraft it relayed scientific data to the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers, used to explore Mars since 2013, and also studied solar and wind effects to understand how atmosphere loss works.
It was thanks to the probe that NASA discovered that erosion of the Martian atmosphere increases drastically during climate events – storms that erupt on the solar surface.
