A NASA Spacecraft Orbiting Mars Just Mysteriously Went Offline

"But keeping up with spacecraft across a vast distance of tens of millions of miles is no easy feat. Case in point: in a Tuesday update, NASA admitted that it had lost signal of its MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft. It was expected to send telemetry back to Earth on December 6, but it was never picked up by NASA's Deep Space Network, a global system of massive radio antennas built to keep in touch with interplanetary spacecraft."

"The Maven spacecraft launched in late 2013 and arrived at the Red Planet roughly a year later. It's designed to study the Martian upper atmosphere and how particles from the Sun interact with it. It also has the extremely important task of relaying communications between missions on the Martian surface and Earth. As Scientific American points out, it's one of four spacecraft that do this job, alongside the European Space Agency's Exomars Trace Orbiter, and NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey."

"A new Red Planet orbiter, called the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter, designed to provide next-generation communications with Mars, was recently revived in president Donald Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" act, which allocated it a budget of $700 million. However, it's unclear when the project will launch, let alone wrap up development. It's not the first time MAVEN has failed to phone home. In 2022, the spacecraft spent three months in safe mode after its Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs), which are critical"

Seven spacecraft currently orbit Mars, three operated by NASA, studying geology, atmosphere, radiation and supporting surface missions from just over 100 to tens of thousands of miles. NASA reported loss of signal from the MAVEN orbiter after expected telemetry on December 6 was not received by the Deep Space Network. Mission and operations teams are investigating the anomaly to address the situation. MAVEN launched in late 2013 to study the Martian upper atmosphere, solar particle interactions, and to relay communications between surface missions and Earth. MAVEN is one of four primary relay spacecraft. A revived Mars Telecommunications Orbiter received funding but lacks a clear launch timeline. MAVEN previously entered safe mode in 2022 after inertial measurement unit issues.

Read at Futurism