NASA engineers are attempting to restore telemetry with MAVEN, which has conducted atmospheric science at Mars for over 10 years.
If MAVEN does not respond to commanding by early January 2026, NASA may reclassify the mission’s operational status.
Once the conjunction window closes, mission controllers plan to resume efforts to reestablish contact with MAVEN and assess the spacecraft's status.
The images taken by the Curiosity rover did not reveal MAVEN, reinforcing indications that its attitude or orbital path has changed.
Real-time monitoring of MAVEN will pause during the upcoming Mars solar conjunction.
The Curiosity rover team used Mastcam on December 16 and 20 to search the sky along MAVEN's nominal reference orbit.
The partial signal indicates that MAVEN was rotating in an unexpected way after emerging from behind Mars.
MAVEN has continued to operate by collecting information on Martian dust storms, winds, and auroras.
Tracking data recovered on December 6 suggests that MAVEN displayed unexpected behavior as it emerged from behind Mars.
MAVEN's mission is to study the interaction between Mars' atmosphere and solar wind.
MAVEN serves as a relay satellite connecting NASA's rovers Perseverance and Curiosity on the Martian surface to Earth.
NASA is continuing recovery efforts for MAVEN, but has not yet achieved success.
After completing its primary mission of one year, MAVEN significantly contributed to the understanding of Mars' atmosphere.
NASA announced that it has been unable to communicate with the Mars spacecraft MAVEN since December 4.
MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) was launched in November 2013 and reached Mars ten months later.
NASA reports that MAVEN appeared to be tumbling when it emerged from behind Mars.
If controllers cannot recover MAVEN, Mars atmospheric science would lose a platform for continuous upper-atmosphere and space-weather measurements.
Future updates are expected once engineers detect a signal from MAVEN or exhaust planned commanding and listening campaigns using the Deep Space Network.
MAVEN studies how the solar wind and radiation strip gas from the Martian upper atmosphere and shape the planet's long-term climate evolution.
With MAVEN currently offline, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Odyssey, and ESA's Trace Gas Orbiter are carrying a larger share of relay duties.