Overview
- MAVEN’s last full telemetry arrived on December 4, and a brief December 6 tracking fragment indicated unexpected rotation and a likely shift from its planned orbit.
- NASA reports the cause remains unknown as engineers analyze the fragment and continue recontact attempts through the Deep Space Network.
- An industry source said the symptoms could fit an “energetic event,” such as a propellant system failure, but this scenario has not been confirmed.
- Public claims blaming the outage on comet 3I/ATLAS lack evidence, and NASA has not connected the loss of signal to the comet observation.
- With MAVEN unavailable, Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter are taking additional relay passes as the Perseverance and Curiosity teams adjust daily plans.