NASA Says Farewell to MAVEN Mars Mission, Hosts Media Call Today
NASA has officially concluded the MAVEN Mars mission after over 11 years of operation. The spacecraft, which entered orbit around Mars in 2014, provided critical insights into the Martian atmosphere and its evolution. Following an unexpected loss of signal, the review board determined that MAVEN is not recoverable and has begun the decommissioning process.
- ▪MAVEN was the first mission dedicated to studying the Martian atmosphere and its evolution.
- ▪The spacecraft experienced a loss of signal in December 2025 and was determined to be in an unrecoverable state.
- ▪NASA will archive the full dataset from MAVEN for future scientific research.
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7 min readNASA Says Farewell to MAVEN Mars Mission, Hosts Media Call TodayJessica TaveauJun 03, 2026 RELEASE26-047NASA Headquarters Artist’s concept of NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft at Mars. The spacecraft entered orbit around the planet in 2014 and has completed over eleven years of observing the Martian upper atmosphere, ionosphere, and interactions with the Sun and solar wind to explore the loss of the Red Planet’s atmosphere to space. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Colorado/Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics The first mission devoted to observing the Martian atmosphere and its evolution, NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution), has ended after more than 11 years in orbit at Mars and a decade beyond its primary, one-year mission.
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