NASA won't give up hope on silent MAVEN Mars probe: 'We're still looking for it'

NASA has yet to reestablish contact with its MAVEN Mars spacecraft despite ongoing efforts, agency officials said Monday (March 16).

NASA lost contact with MAVEN on Dec. 6, 2025, after the spacecraft was expected to emerge from Mars' far side. Communications received two days earlier showed the spacecraft was operating normally — with "no indications of problems whatsoever," Louise Prockter, director of NASA's planetary science division, said during a town hall at this year's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.

Prockter said no signal has been detected by NASA's Deep Space Network since a planned two-week communication blackout ended on Jan. 16. The scheduled pause in communications, caused by a solar conjunction — when the sun aligns between Earth and Mars — prevents signal interference and avoids sending partial or distorted commands that could trigger unintended behavior in the spacecraft.