NASA hunts for silent MAVEN as Mars relay duties shift

NASA has not declared MAVEN lost after losing contact with the Mars orbiter on Dec. 6, 2025, and recovery attempts have yielded no signal since a solar conjunction ended Jan. 16. Officials say MAVEN may have rotated unexpectedly as it emerged from behind Mars, so recovery efforts continue while other orbiters take on relay duties; NASA has deployed assets like Green Bank Observatory and even tried to image MAVEN with the Curiosity rover, but no trace has been found. If the spacecraft is declared lost, NASA is weighing replacements for Mars’ relay network, aided by a $700 million budget line for a high-performance Mars telecom orbiter and proposals such as Blue Origin’s Mars relay concept. MAVEN launched in 2013 and spent over a decade studying Mars’ atmosphere.