CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA has lost contact with a spacecraft that has orbited Mars for more than a decade.
Maven abruptly stopped communicating to ground stations over the weekend. NASA said this week that it was working fine before it went behind the red planet. When it reappeared, there was only silence.
Launched in 2013, Maven began studying the upper Martian atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind once reaching the red planet the following year. Scientists ended up blaming the sun for Mars losing most of its atmosphere to space over the eons, turning it from wet and warm to the dry and cold world it is today.
Maven also has served as a communication relay for NASA’s two Mars rovers, Curiosity and Perseverance.
Engineering investigations are underway, according to NASA.
NASA has two other spacecraft around Mars that are still active: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2005, and Mars Odyssey, launched in 2001.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
LATEST POSTS
- 1
World's oldest known tortoise still very much alive despite rumor to the contrary - 2I binged all 24 Hallmark Christmas movies in less than 30 days. I emerged a changed man.
- 3How grandchildren are stepping up to fill the caregiver gap
- 4Journalist reported killed in the Gaza Strip
- 5Building Tough Connections: Individual Bits of knowledge on Association
- Israel says Iran's military industry will be destroyed 'within days'
- Dirty soda started as a Mormon alternative to booze. Now it's everywhere.
- Vote in favor of your Favored Travel Movement
- Revealing the Incomparable Realms: An Excursion through Power and Inheritance
- More parents refusing this shot that prevents serious bleeding at birth
- Physicists and philosophers have long struggled to understand the nature of time: Here's why
- ‘Integral part of our nation’: Herzog visits Franciscan Sisters in Jerusalem ahead of Christmas
- Key Little Things That Advantage Old People
- Shrewd Home Gadgets to Save Energy
