Maven's Impact on Science

NASA's MAVEN spacecraft slipped out of contact with mission control in December 2025, and the mission officially ended on June 3, 2026. Yet, the story that began with a November 2013 launch is anything but finished. The Lockheed Martin-built MAVEN spacecraft spent more than a decade orbiting the Red Planet, far exceeding its primary mission timeline and gifting the scientific community a treasure trove of discoveries that will shape our understanding of the planet, our solar system and every future human step toward Mars.

From day one, MAVEN was tasked with a lofty goal: unravel the mysteries of the slow disappearance of Mars' upper atmosphere. The data it returned did exactly that and then some, including:

• Advancing our understanding of how the erosion of Mars' atmosphere increases significantly during solar storms
• Discovering several types of auroras that light up when energetic particles plunge into the atmosphere, bombarding gases and causing a glow
• Measuring atmospheric sputtering for the first time at any planet
• Studying how dust storms affect Mars' upper atmosphere and impact the escape of water to space
• Contributing to NASA's effort to observe comet 3I/ATLAS at Mars

MAVEN was the second of NASA's Mars Scout missions. Its principal investigator was from the University of Colorado with mission management by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

A Trusted Mission Partner Across the Solar System

Lockheed Martin not only built the spacecraft but performed mission operations for over a decade. And we have been an engineering force at Mars for over 50 years, beginning with the Viking 1 lander in 1976. Our engineers have enabled NASA orbiters like MAVEN to stay on course, delivering data far beyond primary mission timelines. That same DNA of ingenuity fuels every deep space mission in our portfolio today, from developing the aeroshell technology that underpinned every NASA landed Mars mission such as the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, to exploring far off asteroids with Lucy and OSIRIS-APEX, and even providing the radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) that powered humanity's first flyby of the outer planets including Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.

It's this level of technical expertise and management with valuable partners at NASA and universities that bring mission success. MAVEN's under budget development, on time launch and technical execution stand as a testament to that teamwork.

In celebrating MAVEN's final orbit, we also honor the continuum of engineering and science excellence that turns bold concepts into proven flight hardware, fueling every mission that will carry humanity farther into the solar system.