Overview
- Contact with the Mars orbiter has been lost since early December, with no telemetry received since Dec. 4.
- With the Mars–Earth solar conjunction over on Jan. 16, the agency is again hailing MAVEN through the Deep Space Network.
- NASA’s planetary science chief Louise Prockter said recovery now appears very unlikely.
- The only signal since the outage—a Dec. 6 tracking snippet—indicates the spacecraft was rotating abnormally and may have deviated from its planned path.
- Teams also tried to spot MAVEN with the Curiosity rover without success, as the mission’s decade of atmospheric science underscores what could be a significant loss.