After 11 years at Mars, NASA's MAVEN spacecraft went out with a whisper

Key points

• NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft was in excellent shape when it disappeared behind Mars on December 6 of last year.
• The routine passage, called an occultation, was supposed to last less than an hour, but ground teams didn’t hear from the spacecraft when it was supposed to regain contact with Earth.
• The loss of communication triggered contingency plans for engineers to try to restore a link with MAVEN, which orbits Mars more than 200 million miles from Earth.
• To no avail, they listened for faint signals and uplinked commands in the blind.
• Hopes of saving the mission faded over time, and NASA officials announced Wednesday that they’re giving up on it.