NASA officially declared its Mars MAVEN spacecraft dead on Wednesday, marking the end of a mission that was led by the University of Colorado Boulder for more than a decade.
The MAVEN spacecraft, or the Mars Atmospheric and Volatile EvolutioN, was launched in 2013 as the first NASA mission devoted to observing the Martian atmosphere and its evolution. The spacecraft was last heard from Dec. 6, when it experienced an unexpected loss of signal after it passed behind Mars. NASA conducted an investigation, and after six months of no communication with the orbiter, declared the MAVEN spacecraft officially dead.
The end of the MAVEN mission marks an emotional loss for many of the scientists who worked on it, including the more than 200 students, professors and researchers in Colorado and at CU Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics who have worked on the MAVEN mission in the past 15 years. CU Boulder’s Shannon Curry, principal investigator for MAVEN, said the team is broken up about the loss but is “incredibly proud of the science we’ve accomplished over the past decade.”…