Updates on the status of two Mars missions, Maven and Escapade
NASA today posted two separate updates on the status of two of its missions to or at Mars.
First, it appears there is an issue with one engine on one of the two Escapade orbiters on their way to their parking orbit where they will await the right moment to head to Mars.
During trajectory correction maneuvers for NASA’s twin ESCAPADE spacecraft on Dec. 8 and Dec. 12, the mission operations team noticed low thrust during the burn for one of the spacecraft. The team is working to identify the cause and will attempt a trajectory correction maneuver in the coming weeks.
The other spacecraft has successfully completed its two trajectory correction maneuvers, as planned. Both spacecraft are operating normally otherwise, and currently there are no long-term impacts from the trajectory correction delay.
While not the best news, this issue does not at this moment appear critical.
The second update however was even more negative. It appears engineers have not yet been able to re-establish contact and control of the Mars orbiter Maven.
To date, attempts to reestablish contact with the spacecraft have not been successful. Although no spacecraft telemetry has been received since Dec. 4, the team recovered a brief fragment of tracking data from Dec. 6 as part of an ongoing radio science campaign. Analysis of that signal suggests that the MAVEN spacecraft was rotating in an unexpected manner when it emerged from behind Mars. Further, the frequency of the tracking signal suggests MAVEN’s orbit trajectory may have changed. The team continues to analyze tracking data to understand the most likely scenarios leading to the loss of signal. Efforts to reestablish contact with MAVEN also continue.
It appears the loss of Maven is also impacting communications with the two Mars rovers Curiosity and Perseverance. While NASA has use of three orbiters at present, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey, and Europe’s Trace Gas Orbiter, to relay data from the ground to Earth, the loss of Maven reduces that communications network by 25%. Engineers are revising plans to make up some of the loss, but operations for both rovers will be for the time being reduced somewhat.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
NASA today posted two separate updates on the status of two of its missions to or at Mars.
First, it appears there is an issue with one engine on one of the two Escapade orbiters on their way to their parking orbit where they will await the right moment to head to Mars.
During trajectory correction maneuvers for NASA’s twin ESCAPADE spacecraft on Dec. 8 and Dec. 12, the mission operations team noticed low thrust during the burn for one of the spacecraft. The team is working to identify the cause and will attempt a trajectory correction maneuver in the coming weeks.
The other spacecraft has successfully completed its two trajectory correction maneuvers, as planned. Both spacecraft are operating normally otherwise, and currently there are no long-term impacts from the trajectory correction delay.
While not the best news, this issue does not at this moment appear critical.
The second update however was even more negative. It appears engineers have not yet been able to re-establish contact and control of the Mars orbiter Maven.
To date, attempts to reestablish contact with the spacecraft have not been successful. Although no spacecraft telemetry has been received since Dec. 4, the team recovered a brief fragment of tracking data from Dec. 6 as part of an ongoing radio science campaign. Analysis of that signal suggests that the MAVEN spacecraft was rotating in an unexpected manner when it emerged from behind Mars. Further, the frequency of the tracking signal suggests MAVEN’s orbit trajectory may have changed. The team continues to analyze tracking data to understand the most likely scenarios leading to the loss of signal. Efforts to reestablish contact with MAVEN also continue.
It appears the loss of Maven is also impacting communications with the two Mars rovers Curiosity and Perseverance. While NASA has use of three orbiters at present, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey, and Europe’s Trace Gas Orbiter, to relay data from the ground to Earth, the loss of Maven reduces that communications network by 25%. Engineers are revising plans to make up some of the loss, but operations for both rovers will be for the time being reduced somewhat.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
If the malfunctioning Escapade sibling lacks umph, maybe it can be an ersatz transient event observer for the next NEO, interstellar object or whatever.
Sounds as though Maven has taken a hit from some bit of naturally-occuring space debris – large enough to do damage but not large enough to shatter it completely. Luck of the draw in the cosmic shooting gallery.
Dick Eagleson: my first thought was a pressure-tank failure, which would have similar characteristics. Only inspection will tell.
My vote is that NASA fund a surface and orbital mission to Mars every 26 months ( the synodic period of Mars as Grok says it is called )
Grok says the following on this subject:
There are proponents for a more regular cadence of NASA robotic missions to Mars, taking advantage of every synodic launch opportunity (approximately every 26 months).NASA’s own Mars Exploration Program released a long-term strategy in late 2024 that explicitly advocates for an “affordable, regular cadence of missions” with frequent opportunities every launch window.
This includes smaller, lower-cost missions to maintain momentum in exploration, supplemented by occasional larger ones. The goal is sustained robotic presence rather than sporadic flagships. While not every mission would necessarily be a full-scale rover like Curiosity or Perseverance, the strategy supports ongoing surface access (e.g., landers or rovers) alongside orbiters. This approach has backing within NASA’s planetary science division and aligns with community calls for higher-frequency missions to build scientific return over time.
Periodic missions using heritage technology would likely reduce costs over time, primarily by avoiding redundant research and development. The Perseverance rover (Mars 2020 mission) leveraged extensive “heritage hardware” from Curiosity—roughly 85% of its design mass reused the prior system’s engineering—which explicitly saved NASA time, money, and risk compared to a fully new design.
Although Perseverance’s total cost ended up similar to or slightly higher than Curiosity’s (~$2.7–2.9 billion vs. ~$2.5 billion) due to new instruments, sample-caching hardware, and the Ingenuity helicopter, the heritage approach kept development costs lower than starting from scratch. With a standardized platform for repeated missions (e.g., common chassis, entry/descent/landing systems, or mobility designs), future missions could see further savings through production efficiencies, shared testing, and reduced engineering hours—similar to how earlier twin rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) benefited from duplication. NASA’s push for smaller, more frequent missions in its recent strategy is partly motivated by making this cadence affordable through such reuse and simplification.
Steve Richter:
It would be helpful to separate your commentary from that generated. We are interested in what you have to say, but need a way to tell when you are saying it.
Steve Richter: To add to Blair Ivey’s comment, I would also say you should stop relying on Grok for this analysis. In this case it is giving poor information, mostly shaped by the propaganda of NASA officials and the scientists reliant on government money who are stuck in the old school way of doing things.
I just posted last week a long paper by the academic community, working with SpaceX, on its proposals for future Mars missions, based not on old NASA ideas using out-dated technology but on the new commercial rocketry being developed by the private sector (mostly but not exclusively SpaceX). This is where you should be getting your information, not some garbage-in-garbage-out fake AI bot.
Mars is over-represented as it is. Delta IIs dropped enough bomb-disposal robots there already.
Titan needs more love.
Blair Ivey,
Re: MAVEN, it could be both – a pressurant tank holed by some bit of cosmic flotsam.
Your notion for an inspection of MAVEN would be a potential objective for one of those regularly-scheduled Mars missions Mr. Richter urges upon us. To reference another of Robert’s recent posts here, it seems a lot of the tech – maybe even all – needed for such a mission has been recently demonstrated by that Impulse Space-Starfish Space collaboration on an autonomous rendezvous. I seem to recall that Impulse already intends to send its big Helios tug to Mars on the first launch of Relativity’s Terran-R – assuming that plan still holds in the wake of Relativity’s purchase by Eric Schmidt. If not, some other company with an upcoming launch vehicle of suitable, even if lesser, size might want to try something along the same lines using a smaller space tug. Maybe Rocket Lab’s Neutron or Firefly’s Eclipse.
Of course, as Robert notes, SpaceX intends to be sending actual armadas of Starships Mars-ward every synod starting in – most likely – 2029. At least one ship in each fleet could be detailed to deploy multiple spacecraft into one or more Mars orbits and then remain in orbit itself as a high-powered store-and-forward data link to Earth. A MAVEN inspection craft could certainly be included in the payload manifest for such a mission.
Steve Richter,
Robert is correct that all Grok can tell you is what it has gleaned from the Web. Anent Mars missions, that would, until quite recently, have included only the sort of NASA-centric stuff that entirely ignored SpaceX’s Mars plans. Artificial intelligence, unfortunately, has no way to compensate for the general stupidity of any given subset of its sources. By the nature of their functioning, chat bots will tend toward regurgitation of conventional wisdom – blinkered and silly though it often be – because that is what tends to dominate its inputs from the Web.
Jeff Wright,
Mars is over-represented. But that is a function of both scientific politics and NASA’s increasingly limited ability to undertake missions of any kind due to the declining quality of mission management – especially cost control. Fortunately, from 2029 onward, SpaceX will effectively be taking over the Mars portfolio. That should allow NASA to concentrate its own far more meager resources on other destinations – Titan certainly included. As to the general profligacy that has come to typify NASA unmanned science missions, one can only hope Jared Isaacman is able to end that on his watch.
Hello Dick,
“Mars is over-represented.”
It’s also a lot closer than all the competing worlds!
Even so, it isn’t necessarily any safer than most alternatives. MAVEN has been out there for 12 years. It’s planned nominal lifespan was 2 years. Credit to the great engineers who built her, but I think we should feel lucky she has lasted as long as she has.