After 11 years studying Mars from above, NASA's MAVEN spacecraft is officially dead, the agency announced in a statement on Wednesday (June 3). The culprit: a drained battery, triggered by an as-yet-unknown anomaly.
MAVEN (short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) began orbiting Mars on Sept. 21, 2014, on a mission to study the Red Planet's mysterious atmosphere. Circling Mars roughly 6.6 times every Earth day, the spacecraft has facilitated countless discoveries over the last decade — including the first direct observations of a multi-million-year process that has been steadily stripping Mars of its atmosphere.
