NASA has apparently lost contact with its newest Mars orbiter, the Maven (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) probe, completely unexpectedly. It last reported in over the weekend. The US space agency announced this and explained that the telemetry data received at the time indicated normally functioning subsystems. When the probe was supposed to reappear from behind the Red Planet on its orbit, no signals were received on Earth. The teams responsible for the probe have been investigating the anomaly since then and will release further information as soon as it becomes available.
Also important as a relay
Maven reached Mars in the fall of 2014, eight years after NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and even 13 years after Mars Odyssey. Both probes are still active, e…
NASA has apparently lost contact with its newest Mars orbiter, the Maven (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) probe, completely unexpectedly. It last reported in over the weekend. The US space agency announced this and explained that the telemetry data received at the time indicated normally functioning subsystems. When the probe was supposed to reappear from behind the Red Planet on its orbit, no signals were received on Earth. The teams responsible for the probe have been investigating the anomaly since then and will release further information as soon as it becomes available.
Also important as a relay
Maven reached Mars in the fall of 2014, eight years after NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and even 13 years after Mars Odyssey. Both probes are still active, even though Mars Odyssey is slowly running out of fuel, as Ars Technica reports. All three have long exceeded their nominal mission duration, with Maven, for example, being designed for one year at the Red Planet. The orbiter was the first designed to study the upper Martian atmosphere. The data collected then showed, among other things, that the sun’s influence alone was sufficient to strip Mars of its once dense atmosphere. It was previously comparable to that of Earth.
In addition to its research work, Maven has also served as a relay, allowing rovers on Mars to communicate with Earth. Among other things, the probe’s unusual orbit makes it particularly well-suited for this, Ars Technica writes. For example, only Maven can send data to Earth for up to 30 minutes at a time, while the data rate is at its highest. A failure of the probe would be a severe setback for the US space agency, but there are enough probes on the Red Planet that can step in. The European Space Agency ESA’s orbiters can also communicate with NASA’s equipment. In any case, the US space agency has already succeeded multiple times in getting much more distant space probes working again.
❌ Incorrect mission duration × Maven’s primary mission was designed for one Earth year, not two years. This is confirmed in both the NASA source and the internal Heise article. Correction: one year ✓ Accept × Reject (mho)
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This article was originally published in German. It was translated with technical assistance and editorially reviewed before publication.