RIP MAVEN: NASA wraps up historic decade-long Mars mission

NASA has officially initiated the termination of its historic MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) mission, marking the end of an era for Red Planet exploration after more than 11 years in orbit.

The groundbreaking spacecraft, which was the first mission entirely dedicated to studying the Martian atmosphere and its evolution, far outlived its original one-year design lifespan, News.Az reports, citing Anadolu Agency.

According to NASA, communication with the spacecraft was permanently lost on December 6, when it experienced an unexpected drop in signal after passing behind Mars. Following a thorough evaluation by an anomaly review board in February, the space agency officially determined that the aging orbiter is unrecoverable and no longer capable of conducting science or acting as a data relay.

Launched in 2013 and arriving at the Red Planet in 2014, MAVEN spent over a decade analyzing Mars’ upper atmosphere and tracking how solar winds stripped away the planet's water and air over billions of years.

"The MAVEN mission has truly advanced our understanding of the Martian atmosphere and evolution," said Shannon Curry, MAVEN’s principal investigator at the University of Colorado Boulder. "This dataset has had a tremendous impact on the field."

While the spacecraft is silent, its legacy is safe. NASA confirmed that the mission's massive, decade-long dataset has been fully archived, ensuring that scientists will continue to learn from MAVEN's discoveries for years to come.

News.Az 

By Aysel Mammadzada