NASA Confirms End of MAVEN Mission After More Than 11 Years at Mars

NASA said Wednesday that its MAVEN Mars orbiter has ended after more than 11 years at the red planet, months after the spacecraft fell silent and an agency review concluded it could not be recovered.

The spacecraft, last heard from on Dec. 6, 2025, had been operating normally just before it passed behind Mars, NASA said. But when it emerged, NASA’s Deep Space Network — the global antenna system used to communicate with spacecraft — did not detect a signal. Analysis of a brief radio and telemetry fragment indicated MAVEN had entered safe mode, a protective state, and was rotating at an unusually high rate, suggesting its trajectory had been disrupted. An anomaly review board concluded the high rotation likely drained the spacecraft’s batteries, cutting power to communications and leaving it unrecoverable.

MAVEN, short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, was NASA’s first mission devoted to observing the Martian atmosphere and how it changed over time. Over its lifetime, NASA said, the mission produced more than 800 scientific publications and helped researchers better understand how Mars lost much of its atmosphere. “The MAVEN mission has truly advanced our understanding of the Martian atmosphere and evolution. This dataset has had a tremendous impact on the field. Our science team is exceptionally proud of all of these amazing discoveries,” Shannon Curry, MAVEN principal investigator at LASP/University of Colorado Boulder, said in a statement.

The mission launched on Nov. 18, 2013, and entered Mars orbit in September 2014. Its primary mission was expected to last one year, but MAVEN remained in operation for about a decade beyond that. Its core scientific work focused on Mars’ upper atmosphere, ionosphere and interactions with the sun and solar wind, helping scientists piece together how atmospheric loss shaped the planet’s climate history. NASA said the mission’s data also helps inform planning for future human missions, including radiation and environmental concerns. “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. The data collected from MAVEN will continue to provide valuable insight into Mars for decades to come,” said Louise Prockter, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters.

Beyond its science mission, MAVEN also played an important operational role as part of NASA’s Mars Relay Network, helping send data from surface missions on Mars back to Earth. NASA said the orbiter “holds the solar system record for most data relayed from another planet in a single day.”

NASA said it has begun the formal decommissioning process and will archive the full mission dataset for future science and exploration use. The agency said the anomaly review board’s final report is expected later in 2026. NASA also scheduled a media teleconference for 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday to discuss the mission’s achievements, with participants including Tiffany Morgan, MAVEN project manager; Mike Moreau, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate; Greg Heckler, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program; and Curry.