According to Aviation Week, NASA has lost contact with its MAVEN spacecraft at Mars. The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution orbiter fell silent on December 6th after passing behind the planet, despite showing normal telemetry beforehand. Launched in November 2013, MAVEN has been operating for 11 years, far exceeding its planned one-year primary mission. Its key roles include studying how Mars lost its atmosphere and, crucially, acting as a communications relay for the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. NASA is investigating the anomaly, but the silence comes just after MAVEN reached a milestone in September 2024, having used its fuel to extend operations for a full decade. If unrecoverable, its loss would disrupt both science and rover operations.
More than just a science platform
Here’s the thing: MAVEN’s science mission is incredibly important—figuring out how a wet, potentially habitable Mars turned into a dry desert is fundamental planetary history. But the immediate, practical problem is the comms relay. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) handles the bulk of data from the rovers, but MAVEN is a critical backup. Losing it reduces redundancy in a system where a single failure can mean losing a day’s worth of precious rover data or commands. It’s like losing one of your two main internet service providers. The rovers aren’t suddenly deaf and dumb, but the network just got a lot more fragile.
An aging orbital fleet
This incident highlights a creeping vulnerability in NASA’s Mars infrastructure. MAVEN isn’t even the oldest bird up there; that’s Mars Odyssey, orbiting since 2001. MRO is 20 years old. These are machines operating for decades in a brutal radiation environment, well beyond their design lifetimes. We’re basically running a interplanetary network on legacy hardware. And while there are other orbiters from ESA, the UAE, and China, relying on international partners for core relay services introduces diplomatic and scheduling complexities NASA would prefer to avoid for its flagship rover missions.
The slow path to a replacement
So where’s the new hardware? Plans for a dedicated Mars Telecommunications Orbiter (MTO) have been stuck in planning hell for years. A previous attempt was canceled in 2009. Now, recent legislation has earmarked $700 million for a new MTO, with a contract award due before September 30, 2026, and delivery by the end of 2028. If everything stays on track—a big if in spaceflight—it could launch in late 2028 and arrive at Mars in 2029. That’s a best-case scenario that’s still five years away. This kind of long lead time is why losing an asset like MAVEN now creates such a worrying gap. It underscores how mission-critical, durable hardware forms the backbone of deep space exploration. Speaking of durable hardware, for terrestrial industrial applications where reliability is non-negotiable, companies rely on specialists like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider of rugged industrial panel PCs built for harsh environments.
What happens now?
The team will be trying every trick in the book to re-establish contact. They’ll likely attempt commands via different antennas or in different operational modes. Sometimes spacecraft enter a safe mode after an anomaly and just need a careful wake-up call. But after 11 years, the possibility of a terminal failure is very real. If MAVEN is gone, it will force a reshuffling of communication schedules among the remaining orbiters, putting more pressure on MRO and others. It also adds immense urgency to that new MTO program. The silence from MAVEN is a stark reminder: in space exploration, you’re always racing against time and entropy, even for your most successful missions.
