{"id":715050,"date":"2026-06-04T18:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T18:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/715050\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T18:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T18:26:09","slug":"after-11-years-at-mars-nasas-maven-spacecraft-went-out-with-a-whisper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/715050\/","title":{"rendered":"After 11 years at Mars, NASA&#8217;s MAVEN spacecraft went out with a whisper"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cOver the life of the mission, MAVEN supported more than 8 percent of all of our relay sessions planned by our rovers and landers, but it accounted for nearly 18 percent of all of the data returned, illustrating its usefulness when returning large data volumes,\u201d said Tiffany Morgan, director of NASA\u2019s Mars Exploration Program.<\/p>\n<p>The network still has plenty of capacity to support the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers, with some minor caveats.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe do have remaining assets, and those assets have adjusted the amount of data that they return, and the rovers have also adjusted their planning for how they connect to those assets,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cThere is a slight delay on occasion, because we don\u2019t have as many assets in view, to getting our science data back, and MAVEN was critical in returning science data versus operational data. But the Mars Relay Network is resilient enough at this point in time to accommodate, for the most part, the loss of MAVEN with the added delay.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>NASA is asking commercial companies to develop a replacement for the existing Mars Relay Network. The new commercial system, called the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/directorates\/esdmd\/nasa-draws-on-industry-for-mars-telecommunications-network\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mars Telecommunications Network<\/a>, is expected to provide higher throughput and broader coverage for NASA\u2019s future missions to the red planet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInstead of each mission designing its own communications solution, we\u2019ll build in a more capable architecture deliberately designed for Mars,\u201d said Greg Heckler, deputy program manager for capability development at NASA\u2019s Space Communications and Navigation office. \u201cIt will be built on the lessons from MAVEN, from the other orbiters, from every mission operating in this environment, including the current rovers, and from some of our growing endeavors around the Moon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>NASA wants the Mars Telecommunications Network to be operational by the 2030s. The agency released a request for proposals last month.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think there\u2019s \u2026 urgency,\u201d Heckler said. \u201cI think NASA establishing this infrastructure is going to be very important to continue science operations of the current missions here today and then enable us to execute on these newer, bigger missions yet to come.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cOver the life of the mission, MAVEN supported more than 8 percent of all of our relay sessions&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[49,48,66,306],"class_list":["post-715050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}