On December 11, the US Aerospace Administration ( NASA) confirmed that it was facing an emergency situation when it suddenly lost contact with MAVEN, a spacecraft that has been persistently flying around Mars for more than 10 years. According to the latest announcement, the incident occurred over the weekend when signals from ships suddenly disappeared on land clearance stations.
NASA engineers say the spacecraft is still operating completely normally before moving into the hidden area behind the red planet. However, contrary to expectations, when the ship returned to coverage, the ground only received silence instead of the usual data. Currently, urgent technical investigations are being conducted to determine the cause and find ways to restore the connection.
Launched into space in 2013 and approaching Mars a year later, MAVEN (abbreviation of Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) has an important mission of solving the mystery of the planet's atmosphere.
For the past decade, the spacecraft has been studying the upper atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind. Thanks to valuable data from MAVEN, scientists have come to the conclusion that the Sun is the main "prone" to depriving Mars of much of its atmosphere over billions of years, turning it from a warm, moist world into a barren and cold planet like today.
In addition to the task of scientific research, MAVEN also plays a very important logistics role. It acts as a signal transit station, helping to transmit data from two autonomous vehicles Curiosity and Perseverance working on the surface of Mars to Earth. Disconnection with MAVEN can affect the information flow from these robots.
However, NASA still has backup options. The agency currently has two other spacecraft operating stably on Mars' orbit, including the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (born in 2005) and the Mars Odyssey (born in 2001), ensuring complete uninterrupted supervision of the Red Planet.
