NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) mission has officially concluded its operations in Mars orbit after more than 11 years, exceeding its primary one-year mission. The spacecraft experienced an unexpected loss of signal on December 6th as it passed behind the Red Planet, with attempts to re-establish contact ultimately unsuccessful.
NASA convened a media teleconference on Wednesday, June 3rd, at 2 p.m. EDT to discuss the mission’s achievements. Following an anomaly investigation board established in February, the agency reviewed recovery efforts and analyzed the spacecraft’s status. The board concluded that the MAVEN spacecraft could not be recovered and would be unable to resume scientific data collection.
Telemetry data from before the December encounter with Mars indicated all subsystems were functioning normally. However, after the spacecraft emerged from behind Mars, NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) could not detect a signal. A brief telemetry data fragment from the DSN’s recorded radio signals revealed the spacecraft was in safe mode and spinning at an unusually high rate after exiting from behind Mars. This suggested an issue with MAVEN’s orbit. The investigation board determined this spin likely depleted the spacecraft’s batteries, caused its communication system to lose power, and rendered MAVEN unrecoverable.
These preliminary findings do not address the potential root cause for the anomaly, which is still under investigation. The review board is expected to present its final report later this year. NASA has initiated the formal deactivation process for the MAVEN mission and is following standard procedures to archive the complete mission data set for the science and exploration communities.
“The science that MAVEN has provided is key to informing what kind of radiation protection and safety measures we need to put in place before we send humans to Mars,” said Louise Prockter, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters. “The data collected from MAVEN will continue to provide valuable insights about Mars for decades to come.”
Launched in November 2013, the MAVEN mission investigated Mars’s upper atmosphere, ionosphere, and interactions with the Sun to study the planet’s atmospheric loss to space. Understanding atmospheric loss informs scientists about the history of a planet’s atmosphere and climate, its liquid water, and its habitability.
“The MAVEN mission has truly advanced our understanding of the Martian atmosphere and its evolution,” added Shannon Curry, MAVEN’s principal investigator and a researcher at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. “This dataset has had a tremendous impact on the field. Our science team is incredibly proud of all these incredible discoveries.”
The Sun’s Impact on Mars
One of MAVEN’s first major findings was that the erosion of Mars’s atmosphere significantly increases during solar storms. The team studied how the solar wind, a continuous stream of charged particles flowing from the Sun, and solar storms continuously strip away the Martian atmosphere. This process played a key role in changing Mars’s climate from a potentially habitable world to the cold, arid planet it is today. The MAVEN mission took unprecedented steps in advancing our understanding of how the Sun and space weather affect Mars, as it was the only spacecraft capable of simultaneously measuring both the Sun’s and the Martian atmosphere’s response.
Light Shows on Mars
The MAVEN mission discovered various types of auroras, where energetic particles bombard the atmosphere, causing it to emit light. The MAVEN team showed that protons create new types of auroras on Mars. On Earth, proton auroras occur only in very small regions near the poles, whereas on Mars, they can occur everywhere.
Mars’s Atmosphere Sputters into Space
To better understand how Mars lost most of its atmosphere, MAVEN measured atmospheric sputtering at Mars for the first time on any planet. The team did this by observing argon gas, an inert gas that rarely reacts with other atmospheric components. The only significant way argon is removed is through atmospheric sputtering, a process that ejects gas molecules from the atmosphere when ions collide with them at high speeds – similar to diving into water by making a “cannonball” into a pool. The team used 11 years of data to reveal the presence of sputtered argon at high altitudes, in the exact locations where energetic particles collide with the atmosphere, demonstrating sputtering in real time.
Understanding Mars’s Dusty Secrets
In 2018, a series of dust storms created a massive cloud of dust that enveloped the Red Planet. The MAVEN team studied how this “global” dust storm affected Mars’s upper atmosphere and how these events influence water escape to space. It confirmed that heating caused by dust storms led to a sudden increase in the amount of water escaping to space by carrying water molecules much higher than normal.
Chasing Comets
In addition to Mars science, MAVEN contributed to NASA’s efforts to observe comet 3I/ATLAS on Mars. Over 10 days last year, the MAVEN team designed a new observation campaign, capturing multiple images of the comet in multiple wavelengths, akin to using various filters on a camera. It then took high-resolution UV images to identify hydrogen from the comet. By studying a combination of these images, scientists can identify various molecules and better understand the comet’s composition and history.
Throughout the mission’s lifespan, MAVEN’s science team produced over 800 publications, with additional publications planned.
Beyond science, the MAVEN spacecraft also played a crucial role in NASA’s Mars Relay Network, transmitting data from Mars rovers to Earth. It also holds the solar system record for the most data relayed from another planet in a single day.
An audio stream of today’s media teleconference is available on the agency’s website at https://www.nasa.gov/live.
Teleconference participants include:
- Tiffany Morgan, Director, Mars Exploration Program, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters
- Mike Moreau, Project Manager, MAVEN, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
- Greg Heckler, Deputy Director, Talent Development Program, SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation), NASA Headquarters
- Shannon Curry, MAVEN Principal Investigator, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder
Media members wishing to ask questions by phone are asked to RSVP to [email protected] no later than 12:00 p.m. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online.
The MAVEN mission is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. The mission’s principal investigator is at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder and is responsible for science operations and public outreach and communications. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the MAVEN mission. Lockheed Martin Space built the spacecraft and is responsible for mission operations. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California provides navigation and Deep Space Network support.
For more information about NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, visit: https://science.nasa.gov/planetary-science/programs/mars-exploration
