‘In an unrecoverable state’: NASA confirms MAVEN spacecraft is officially dead after orbital ‘anomaly’ behind Mars

After 11 years studying Mars from above, NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft is officially dead, the agency announced in a statement on Wednesday (June 3). The culprit: a drained battery, triggered by an as-yet-unknown anomaly.

MAVEN (short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) began orbiting Mars on Sept. 21, 2014, on a mission to study the Red Planet’s mysterious atmosphere. Circling Mars roughly 6.6 times every Earth day, the spacecraft has facilitated countless discoveries over the last decade — including the first direct observations of a multi-million-year process that has been steadily stripping Mars of its atmosphere.

But on Dec. 6, 2025, NASA unexpectedly lost contact with the probe when it swung behind Mars during a regular orbit. At the time of the probe’s expected reemergence, NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) could not detect a signal from MAVEN. (DSN is an international array of radio antennas that connects Earth with various spacecraft).

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