NASA's Decade-Long Mars Mission Falls Silent
In a shocking turn of events, NASA has lost contact with its Maven spacecraft, which has been orbiting Mars for over 10 years. The US space agency confirmed that all attempts to reestablish communication with the spacecraft have failed so far.
According to officials at NASA, the spacecraft had been functioning normally before it went behind Mars. However, once it emerged from the planet's shadow, there was no signal. "Telemetry showed all subsystems working normally before it orbited behind [Mars]," NASA said in a statement.
The agency has launched an investigation into the anomaly to determine the cause of the sudden loss of contact. While details are still scarce, officials have promised that more information will be shared once available.
Launched in 2013, Maven was initially designed to study the Martian upper atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind. The spacecraft's findings were crucial in helping scientists understand how Mars lost most of its atmosphere over time, transforming it from a warm and wet world to the dry and cold planet we see today.
Maven has also played an important role as a communication relay for NASA's Mars rovers, Curiosity and Perseverance. The rovers have made numerous groundbreaking discoveries, and their continued operation is essential to understanding the Martian environment.
NASA has two other active spacecraft around Mars: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2005, and Mars Odyssey, which was launched in 2001. It remains to be seen what impact the loss of contact with Maven will have on ongoing research and exploration efforts around Mars.
In a shocking turn of events, NASA has lost contact with its Maven spacecraft, which has been orbiting Mars for over 10 years. The US space agency confirmed that all attempts to reestablish communication with the spacecraft have failed so far.
According to officials at NASA, the spacecraft had been functioning normally before it went behind Mars. However, once it emerged from the planet's shadow, there was no signal. "Telemetry showed all subsystems working normally before it orbited behind [Mars]," NASA said in a statement.
The agency has launched an investigation into the anomaly to determine the cause of the sudden loss of contact. While details are still scarce, officials have promised that more information will be shared once available.
Launched in 2013, Maven was initially designed to study the Martian upper atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind. The spacecraft's findings were crucial in helping scientists understand how Mars lost most of its atmosphere over time, transforming it from a warm and wet world to the dry and cold planet we see today.
Maven has also played an important role as a communication relay for NASA's Mars rovers, Curiosity and Perseverance. The rovers have made numerous groundbreaking discoveries, and their continued operation is essential to understanding the Martian environment.
NASA has two other active spacecraft around Mars: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2005, and Mars Odyssey, which was launched in 2001. It remains to be seen what impact the loss of contact with Maven will have on ongoing research and exploration efforts around Mars.
so this is crazy... like, a decade-long mission just drops off the radar? no signal, no nothing. i'm not buying it without some serious source from nasa. how do they know all subsystems were working fine before it went behind mars? did they even check the propulsion system or comms equipment? and what's with the weird timing of this happening? right when nasa is gearing up for another big mission, like that new rover launch... sounds fishy to me 
first it's the rovers losing signal then now maven too? what's next? all those years we're watching these missions unfold and this is how it ends? no more updates, no more discoveries 
. i mean, we know maven was a mission to study the upper atmosphere but still... 10 years is a long time for us to wait for some info 
. what's the point of launching a spacecraft if you're not gonna keep an eye on it? 
at least we got some decent finds from curiosiy and perseverance 
but maven was supposed to be more than just a relay... i hope they get to the bottom of this 
.
.
.
A decade-long mission just drops off radar like that? What's going on with NASA's comms system?! 
They're always talking about how advanced their tech is, but clearly it's not foolproof.
And what about all those scientists who were counting on that data?! This is huge! 
It's like it just stopped sending us updates without even saying goodbye 
. But seriously, scientists have been relying on those spacecraft to learn so much about Mars and its mysteries. What could've caused this? An equipment failure or something more complex? I hope NASA gets to the bottom of this and finds a way to bring Maven back online 
. Those Curiosity and Perseverance rovers are still out there making groundbreaking discoveries, but it's not the same as having direct data from Maven 
. Fingers crossed they can figure out what happened and find a way to revive it 
.
need more info on this one... source pls?
How could they just lose contact with a spacecraft orbiting Mars after 10 years? It's gotta be some serious technical issue... no way, maybe it was just a planned test to see how they'd handle a fail. I mean, the agency's already investigating, so that's probably what happened... probably not 
. Still, this is some serious news - scientists were counting on Maven for all sorts of important research. Guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens next... or maybe they're just gonna make it a surprise re-entry thing like in the movies 
.
mars reconnaissance orbiter & mars odyssey have b been around 4 yrs longer tho so maybe nasa can learn from this 