NASA Declares MAVEN Mars Orbiter Dead After 11 Years, Ending the Mission That Charted How Mars Lost Its Atmosphere

Overview

NASA has formally ended the MAVEN mission, declaring the Mars orbiter unrecoverable on June 3, 2026, roughly six months after the spacecraft fell silent. According to NASA, the agency’s anomaly review board determined that “the MAVEN spacecraft is not recoverable, and it is no longer capable of performing its science and data relay mission.” The decision closes out more than 11 years of observations of the Martian upper atmosphere, capping a mission that, according to Science News, entered orbit in September 2014 and was originally designed to last a single Earth year.

What We Know

MAVEN, short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, launched on Nov. 18, 2013, according to CBS News, aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, as reported by Space.com. The $582 million orbiter, per CBS News, entered orbit on Sept. 21, 2014, according to NASA Science. Space.com describes it as the first probe equipped with instrumentation to study the evolution of Mars’ atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind.

The end came after a sudden loss of contact. MAVEN project manager Mike Moreau, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said that “our last successful communication with MAVEN occurred on December 6 of 2025,” according to CBS News. Fragments of data received that day suggested the spacecraft was spinning at about 2.7 revolutions per minute, when it should not have been spinning at all, according to Science News. “Any kind of rotation was anomalous,” Moreau said, per Science News. At the observed rotation rate, CBS News reports, normal communications likely would not have been possible, and the arrays would have been unable to generate sufficient power. Space.com reports that the spacecraft switched to safe mode and was tumbling in an uncontrollable spin that led to a loss of power, and that the review board concluded it likely lost power within hours of its incident in December.

“The conclusion is that the spacecraft is not recoverable,” Moreau said, according to Science News.

What MAVEN Found

Over its lifetime, the mission’s science team produced more than 800 publications, according to NASA. MAVEN explored the Red Planet’s upper atmosphere, ionosphere, and interactions with the Sun to study the loss of the Martian atmosphere to space, NASA said.

The orbiter measured how quickly Mars is leaking into space. The Red Planet loses about 100 grams of atmosphere every second, and during a solar storm that escape rate jumps by about a factor of 10, according to Science News. MAVEN also reshaped the understanding of Martian auroras: the mission found that protons, rather than electrons, create auroras at Mars, and that while on Earth proton auroras occur only in very small regions near the poles, at Mars they can happen everywhere, according to NASA Science. The spacecraft discovered several types of auroras that flare up when energetic particles plunge into the atmosphere, NASA Science reports.

“We now have a better understanding of atmospheric escape at Mars than any other planet, including Earth,” said MAVEN principal investigator Shannon Curry, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder, according to Science News. “The MAVEN mission has truly advanced our understanding of the Martian atmosphere and evolution,” Curry said, according to NASA. Space.com reported that Curry called it “Best. Mars. Mission. Ever.”

The loss was felt sharply by the team. Moreau said they “really experienced the loss of a loved one with the end of the mission here,” according to Space.com.

What We Don’t Know

NASA has not pinpointed the root cause of the spin that disabled the spacecraft. The agency’s framing centers on the consequences of the high rotation rate rather than its trigger. NASA noted that MAVEN had also served as a data relay for surface missions, and the agency has not detailed how the loss of that relay capability will be addressed, beyond stating that the orbiter is no longer capable of performing its science and data relay mission, according to NASA.

NASA officials framed the data as enduring. “The data collected from MAVEN will continue to provide valuable insight into Mars for decades to come,” said Louise Prockter, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, according to Space.com. Prockter also said that “the science MAVEN has given us is key to informing what kind of radiation protection and safety measures we must take before sending humans to Mars,” according to NASA.