NASA's dead Mars orbiter MAVEN will crash into the Red Planet in the next 100 years. It's not the only probe in the Mars morgue

space.com Jun 5, 2026

NASA’s dead Mars orbiter MAVEN will crash into the Red Planet in the next 100 years. It’s not the only probe in the Mars morgue

Curated by Shubham · TechCapsules · Jun 5, 2026

AI-summarised brief · reviewed before publication

NASA has officially declared its MAVEN orbiter dead, marking the end of a highly successful 12-year mission that studied Mars' atmosphere. The orbiter went dark in December without warning, but its fate would have been the same even if it had been shut down in a controlled manner. MAVEN's remains will remain in orbit for 50 to 100 years before entering the Martian atmosphere, where it will burn up. This is not an isolated incident, as several other Mars orbiters have met a similar fate.

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Satellite AI Inference Clears Orbit: Gemma 3 Ran Aboard YAM-9 in April

Loft Orbital's YAM-9 spacecraft successfully demonstrated the first publicly disclosed execution of a vision-language model in orbit. Aboard the spacecraft, Google DeepMind's Gemma 3 performed natural language queries, classified Earth imagery, and produced plain-English summaries without transmitting raw pixels to the ground. This achievement marks a significant shift in the value layer of Earth observation, moving from ground-based processing to onboard inference capabilities. The model, running on an Nvidia Jetson Orin AGX graphics processing unit, utilized a software harness developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to fit within the spacecraft's memory budget and processing constraints.

💡 This breakthrough enables Earth observation satellites to operate more autonomously, reducing reliance on ground-based processing and potentially leading to faster and more efficient analysis of satellite imagery.

space.com · Jun 17

‘Best. Mars. Mission. Ever.’ Scientists hail MAVEN’s legacy as NASA retires Red…

NASA has officially begun decommissioning the MAVEN orbiter, marking the end of an 11-year mission that significantly advanced scientists' understanding of Mars. The spacecraft lost contact in December 2025 after a routine communications blackout, and despite months of recovery efforts, it was determined that MAVEN was not recoverable. The mission, which was originally planned to last two years, far exceeded its goals, providing crucial insights into Mars' atmosphere, including the impact of solar storms on atmospheric gas loss. MAVEN's findings have contributed to over 800 scientific publications and have helped establish a clearer picture of the forces that transformed Mars over billions of years.

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spacenews.com · Jun 17

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💡 This investment will accelerate Dawn Aerospace's growth in emerging markets, including hypersonics testing and in-space mobility. By delivering reusable, responsive access across the air and space domain, Dawn can unlock the economic potential of space and solve critical national security challenges.

spacenews.com · Jun 17

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space.com · Jun 17

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spacenews.com · Jun 17

Swiss decision to not contribute to Copernicus tests program’s value model

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