Nasa loses contact with spacecraft orbiting Mars for more than a decade

Nasa has lost contact with a spacecraft that has orbited Mars for more than a decade, though the US space agency said it was trying to re-establish a communications link.

Maven abruptly stopped communicating to ground stations over the weekend. Nasa said this week that the spacecraft had been working fine before it went behind the red planet. When it reappeared, there was only silence. “Telemetry showed all subsystems working normally before it orbited behind [Mars],” Nasa said in a statement.

“The spacecraft and operations teams are investigating the anomaly to address the situation. More information will be shared once it becomes available,” Nasa added.

Launched in 2013, Maven began studying the upper Martian atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind once reaching the red planet the following year. Scientists ended up blaming the sun for Mars losing most of its atmosphere to space over the eons, turning it from wet and warm to the dry and cold world it is today.

Maven also has served as a communication relay for Nasa’s two Mars rovers, Curiosity and Perseverance, whose exploration of the planet has produced many scientific discoveries.

Nasa has two other spacecraft around Mars that are still active: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2005, and Mars Odyssey, launched in 2001.

Associated Press contributed to this report