Scientists have found a fragment of tracking data from MAVEN that suggests its orbital trajectory may have changed when re-emerged from behind Mars and lost contact with NASA on December 6, 2025.
New images from NASA's MAVEN spacecraft reveal wide areas of Mars' night sky pulsing in ultraviolet light. While researchers understand the light's source, its mysterious spiral shape left them puzzled. "There is a vast spiral of ultraviolet light…
NASA's MAVEN spacecraft has created a map of electric currents around Mars, five years after it entered into its orbit. These currents hold crucial clues in the atmospheric loss that made the red planet incapable of supporting life. "These currents play a…
When comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) made its historic encounter with planet Mars in October 2014, passing roughly 140 000 km (87 00 miles) from its surface, it wreaked havoc on the magnetic environment around Mars. The effect, temporary but profound, was measured…
Data from NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission has allowed researchers to understand the drastic transformation in the Martian environment – from a wet, warm climate which may have supported life to the cold and dry planet that it has…
Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft has observed two unexpected phenomena in the Martian atmosphere: an unexplained high-altitude dust cloud and aurora that reaches deep into the Martian atmosphere.The presence of the dust at orbital altitudes from
Early discoveries by NASA’s newest Mars orbiter are starting to reveal key features about the loss of the planet’s atmosphere to space over time. The findings are among the first returns from NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) missio
Two NASA and one European spacecraft that obtained the first up-close observations of a comet flyby of Mars on October 19, 2014 have gathered new information about the basic properties of the comet’s nucleus and directly detected the effects on the Martian atmosph
C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) is scheduled for a very close flyby at only about 139 500 km (88 000 miles) away from the surface of Mars on October 19, 2014 around 18:27 UTC. That is less than half the distance between Earth and its moon and less than one-tenth the distance
Just after arrival, NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN), the first spacecraft sent to explore the tenuous upper atmosphere of Mars, has started working on it's mission. Within 24 hours of being placed in the Red Planet's orbit, the spacec
