NASA has officially ended its MAVEN mission after losing contact with the Mars spacecraft for six months, bringing to a close one of its longest-running efforts to study the Red Planet’s atmosphere.
According to a AFP report, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft entered orbit around Mars in 2014. Although NASA initially planned the mission to last one to two years, the probe continued operating for more than a decade.
Communication with the spacecraft was lost in December 2025. After months of unsuccessful attempts to re-establish contact, NASA announced on Wednesday that it had decided to conclude the mission. The agency believes the probe remains in orbit around Mars.
NASA said it will investigate the cause of the communication failure.
Shannon Curry, an astrophysics professor involved with the mission, described MAVEN as the “best Mars mission ever”. She said the spacecraft helped scientists gain a deeper understanding of atmospheric escape — the process through which atmospheric gases are lost to space.
According to Curry, MAVEN provided a better understanding of atmospheric escape on Mars than on any other planet, including Earth, making the planet a valuable natural laboratory for studying the atmospheres of rocky worlds.
NASA exploration programme chief Tiffany Morgan said the mission significantly advanced scientific knowledge of Mars’s atmosphere, climate history and potential habitability.
Beyond its scientific role, MAVEN also served as a communications relay between Earth and the robotic missions operating on the Martian surface.
With the mission now concluded, other orbiters around Mars will assume responsibility for relaying communications from those surface missions.
