NASA loses contact with MAVEN Mars orbiter

Houston, we have a problem: NASA has lost contact with the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft.

The aerospace agency revealed the issue in a Tuesday post that explained recent telemetry from the craft suggested all its systems were working as intended.

After NASA received that data, MAVEN swung behind Mars, and therefore lost contact with Earth as its radios can’t send data through a planet.

But when MAVEN’s orbit brought it back into view, ground stations on Earth could not detect any signal from the probe.

NASA doesn’t know what’s gone wrong.

“The spacecraft and operations teams are investigating the anomaly to address the situation,” its statement reads, before promising to deliver more information once it becomes available.

NASA launched MAVEN in November 2013, and it reached Mars orbit in September 2014 for a planned one-year mission investigating Mars’s atmosphere and serving as ...