NASA has been unable to contact its MAVEN orbiter since early December after the spacecraft went silent as it passed behind Mars. A brief tracking fragment recovered Dec. 15 suggested the vehicle was tumbling and that its orbit may have changed; no telemetry has been received since Dec. 4, 2025. Recovery attempts were stalled during a solar conjunction from Dec. 29 to Jan. 16. With Mars back in view, NASA planned renewed contact attempts on Jan. 16 while continuing to evaluate all recovery options.
NASA Readies New Effort to Reestablish Contact With Wayward MAVEN Orbiter
Firefly's Blue Ghost lunar lander captures its shadow on the moon's surface after completing a successful landing March 2 near a volcanic feature on the moon called Mons Latreille. The vehicle became the first of two landers manufactured by a U.S. company to reach the moon is 2025 in crucial missions to lay the groundwork for NASA to return humans to the lunar surface in the years ahead.
NASA is preparing renewed attempts to contact its MAVEN orbiter after the long-serving Mars spacecraft went silent in early December. The agency has been unable to restore two-way communication for more than a month, and a brief tracking fragment recovered by ground teams suggests the spacecraft may have been tumbling and could be on an altered trajectory.
What Happened
The MAVEN anomaly began on Dec. 6, when ground teams "experienced a loss of signal" as the orbiter passed behind Mars from Earth's perspective. Telemetry showed all subsystems functioning normally before the outage, but when MAVEN re-emerged NASA's Deep Space Network did not detect a normal carrier signal.
Key Recovery Details
Although no telemetry has been received since Dec. 4, 2025, controllers captured a "brief fragment" of tracking data by Dec. 15. That fragment indicated the vehicle was likely tumbling when it came back into view and that its orbit may have changed. NASA continued to send commands and listen for replies, and even the Curiosity rover attempted — without success — to spot the orbiter from the Martian surface.
Recovery efforts were complicated by a solar conjunction: from Dec. 29 to Jan. 16 Mars and Earth were on opposite sides of the Sun, which prevents reliable two-way communications with spacecraft at Mars. With the conjunction ended, NASA scheduled renewed attempts to hail MAVEN beginning on Jan. 16.
About MAVEN
MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) launched in November 2013 and entered Mars orbit in September 2014. The roughly 11-foot-tall orbiter has spent more than a decade measuring how gases escape from Mars' upper atmosphere, helping scientists reconstruct the planet's climate history, water loss, and past habitability. MAVEN is one of three active orbiters at Mars, alongside the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2005) and Mars Odyssey (2001).
Other Science Contributions
Beyond atmospheric studies, MAVEN contributed ultraviolet observations of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS after the object entered the solar system in mid-2025. Those UV images, together with close-up imagery from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and a faint surface view from Perseverance, help researchers probe the comet's composition. 3I/ATLAS made its closest approach to Earth on Dec. 19, 2025, passing about 170 million miles away.
What’s next: With the solar conjunction over, NASA will continue scheduled hails, listen for any carrier or telemetry, and evaluate every viable recovery option. The agency has not ruled out any outcome but remains committed to exhausting contact strategies for the long-serving orbiter.
Reporting by USA TODAY’s Space Connect team; NASA updates and blog posts are the primary sources for the recovery timeline and technical details.
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