NASA's MAVEN spacecraft is still silent at Mars — and apparently is spinning, too

Artist’s illustration of NASA's MAVEN spacecraft, which is investigating how, why and when Mars lost most of its atmosphere.

Things aren't looking good for one of NASA's Mars orbiters.

MAVEN (short for "Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution") has been silent since Dec. 4, despite repeated efforts to hail the spacecraft, NASA announced in an update on Monday (Dec. 15). And a fragment of tracking data recovered on Dec. 6 delivered a bit of additional bad news.