MAVEN's instruments have measured interactions between the ionosphere, exosphere, and incoming space environment.
MAVEN provides constraints on escape rates of key atmospheric species and on how atmospheric loss varied over time.
MAVEN forwards data between the Martian surface and Earth.
MAVEN's long baseline of observations has been central to understanding how present-day escape processes connect to Mars' ancient thicker atmosphere.
MAVEN has been in Mars orbit for more than a decade.
MAVEN has served as a key communications relay for surface missions including the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers.
NASA has not announced a timeline for declaring MAVEN unrecoverable and continues to treat the anomaly as an active recovery case.
NASA indicates that MAVEN's orbit might have changed.
MAVEN was launched on an Atlas V rocket in 2013.
On December 6th, MAVEN went behind Mars and did not send a signal when it came back into view.
MAVEN has been in Mars orbit since 2014.
NASA has lost contact with its MAVEN Mars orbiter.
UHF relays to orbiters like MAVEN allow for significantly higher data throughput.
A prolonged outage of MAVEN could force surface teams to deprioritize high-bandwidth data returns until the link is restored.
In February 2022, MAVEN spent three months in safe mode due to erratic behavior of its Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs).
MAVEN carries one of the largest relay loads in the Mars Relay Network.
The loss of situational awareness has triggered a safe mode event for MAVEN that threatens data relay operations for Perseverance and Curiosity rovers.
The mission team uploaded a software patch allowing MAVEN to navigate using 'all-stellar' mode instead of degrading gyroscopes.
MAVEN serves as a vital high-speed UHF communications bridge, relaying science data from surface rovers back to Earth via the Deep Space Network (DSN).
MAVEN's inability to determine its orientation has halted its participation in the Mars Relay Network (MRN).