(NewsNation) — NASA has officially declared the MAVEN spacecraft dead after months with no communication.
Short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, MAVEN has orbited Mars for 11 years, helping facilitate countless discoveries.
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The agency lost contact with MAVEN in December when the probe passed behind Mars on regular orbit. When it was expected to reemerge, NASA could not detect a signal.
The spacecraft is believed to have died of a drained battery, but it isn’t yet known what triggered the battery to drain.
Preliminary data did show that MAVEN was orbiting at an unusually high rate when it reemerged from behind Mars.
MAVEN began orbiting Mars on Sep. 21, 2014. It circled the red planet roughly 6.6 times a day to study the atmosphere.
Researchers used data from MAVEN to identify a previously unknown phenomenon in Mars’ atmosphere that suggests the planet could be more defended against solar radiation than previously thought. MAVEN’s data also provided the first direct evidence of the process that has gradually eroded the planet’s atmosphere.
Those discoveries, along with other information about Mars’ atmosphere, will play a role in understanding how humans might someday land on the surface of Mars.
Following the loss of contact, NASA convened a review board earlier this year. It determined that the spacecraft is not recoverable.
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