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Arthur T Knackerbracket [soylentnews.org] writes:

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story [theregister.com]:

NASA is setting up an anomaly review board to look into the fate of its Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, which was last heard from on December 6.

Attempts to make contact with the Mars orbiter are ongoing [nasa.gov]. The final fragments of data indicated that the spacecraft was tumbling and had possibly changed trajectory. The MAVEN team is analyzing snippets of data recovered from a December 6 radio science campaign to develop a timeline of possible events and likely root causes of the issue.

James Godfrey, retired Spacecraft Operations Manager for ESA's Mars Express, pondered what might have happened to MAVEN in a message to The Register.

"The fact that it appears to be rotating in an unexpected manner (tumbling?) and might have experienced an orbital change (I guess from inconsistent Doppler data) does suggest an energetic event.

"It's unlikely that anything has hit it – not much space debris at Mars. So more likely something onboard."

If the spacecraft had entered a normal safe mode, controllers should have been able to communicate with it. "So whatever has happened, it hasn't been able to reach safe mode for some unknown reason," Godfrey speculated.

"So problems that could result in loss of attitude, possible orbit change, would suggest problems affecting GNC [Guidance, Navigation, and Control]. Could be an onboard computer failure, stuck valve, run out of fuel etc. Possibly a problem with the reaction wheels? In any case, something that caused the thrusters to fire in an unbalanced fashion from which the spacecraft was unable to recover autonomously."

All possibilities are bad news for MAVEN, both as a mission and a telecommunications relay for NASA's Mars rovers, Curiosity and Perseverance. The spacecraft entered Mars orbit on September 22, 2014, with a two-year planned mission. It has since endured for well over a decade, gathering data on the planet's atmosphere.

Attempts to contact the probe were further complicated by the solar conjunction, when the Sun lies between the Earth and Mars, blocking communication.

Godfrey noted this was "a more challenging conjunction than the run-of-the-mill" and the fact "the Sun being very active at the moment won't help."

All of which makes MAVEN's recovery at this stage improbable. The thermal and power status of the spacecraft is not known, nor is its location.

The assembly of a formal anomaly review board is an indicator that, while NASA has yet to throw in the towel, things are not looking good for MAVEN, and managers want to understand what happened.

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