Mission to Mars

NASA’s Mars story this week is dominated by a farewell to **MAVEN**, the long-running orbiter that studied the Martian upper atmosphere and helped relay data from surface missions. NASA said the spacecraft was last heard from on Dec. 6 after an unexpected loss of signal behind Mars, and a review board has now determined that MAVEN is **not recoverable** and can no longer perform its science or relay role.[1]

For listeners following current Mars exploration, that matters because MAVEN has been one of the quiet workhorses supporting the broader Mars program. Its loss closes a major chapter in orbit at Mars, even as other missions continue to generate science and keep the red planet in the spotlight.[1][2]

NASA is also signaling that Mars exploration is moving toward a new model. NASA Science says the agency announced a **public-private partnership** aimed at advancing Mars science by combining NASA leadership with commercial innovation.[4] That suggests the next phase of Mars exploration may rely less on single flagship spacecraft and more on a mixed ecosystem of government and private missions.[4]

There is also fresh scientific momentum from **Perseverance**. NASA recently said it will share details about a new finding tied to a rock sample called “Sapphire Canyon,” taken by the rover during its exploration of Jezero Crater.[5] While NASA has not framed that announcement as a mission launch or arrival story, it is still part of the live Mars mission pipeline and reflects how active the rover science program remains.[5]

Beyond NASA, the wider Mars landscape is still changing. MarsDaily reports that the UAE has extended its Mars probe mission until **2028**, a sign that international Mars operations are continuing to mature rather than stand still.[7] That extension adds another reminder that Mars exploration is no longer limited to brief visits or single-agency efforts.[7]

In short, the latest Mars news is a mix of endings and beginnings: the likely loss of MAVEN, new institutional momentum for future Mars work, ongoing rover science, and continued international commitment to the planet.[1][4][5][7]

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According to NASA, the biggest Mars-mission news in the past week is the agency’s formal farewell to **MAVEN**, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, after mission review teams determined the spacecraft is **not recoverable** and can no longer carry out its science or relay role. NASA said MAVEN’s last contact came after an unexpected loss of signal, ending a mission that helped scientists understand how Mars lost much of its atmosphere and how the planet evolved over time.

At the same time, NASA Science continues to highlight ongoing Mars mission coverage, with fresh reporting centered on **Perseverance** and the rover’s sample-collection campaign in Jezero Crater. In recent mission updates and public briefings, NASA has emphasized Perseverance’s work on the crater floor and its preparations to collect samples that could one day be returned to Earth, a key step in the broader Mars Sample Return effort.

For listeners following Mars exploration beyond NASA, Mars Daily’s recent reporting points to continued international activity, including **ExoMars Rosalind Franklin** parachute testing ahead of a planned 2028 mission. That remains an important signal that Mars exploration is still active on multiple fronts, even as some older spacecraft are retired.

The current picture is clear: one major Mars mission is ending, while another is still pushing forward with the search for clues about Mars’s past habitability and the long-term goal of returning Martian samples home. For listeners who want the most immediate takeaway, this week’s Mars story is about transition, as one spacecraft is being honored for its legacy and others keep advancing the next phase of exploration.

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Mars is back in the headlines this week, as space agencies push forward with new missions, say goodbye to a veteran spacecraft, and prepare fresh technology for future journeys to the Red Planet.

According to NASA, the big news is the formal end of the MAVEN mission, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN orbiter, after more than eleven years studying how the Martian atmosphere escapes into space and how the planet evolved from a wetter world to the cold desert we see today. NASA reports that contact with MAVEN was lost in December after the spacecraft passed behind Mars, and an independent review board has now confirmed that the spacecraft is not recoverable and can no longer perform its science or communications relay roles. NASA officials are marking the occasion with a media teleconference, emphasizing that MAVEN’s data set will continue to shape our understanding of Mars’ climate history and habitability for years to come.

While one mission ends, work to reach Mars in the coming years is intensifying. Mars Daily reports that the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover program has taken a critical step toward launch, as its main supersonic parachute was recently “baked sterile” at ESA’s ESTEC test center. This high‑temperature treatment is designed to kill any Earth microbes clinging to the hardware, helping to protect Mars from biological contamination when the rover heads for the Red Planet, currently targeted for 2028. Engineers are now preparing further tests of the parachute system, which must slow the rover safely through the thin Martian atmosphere, a crucial technology after earlier ExoMars parachute difficulties.

Mars Daily also notes continued activity on the surface of Mars itself. NASA’s Curiosity rover has begun a new drilling campaign in Gale Crater, targeting layered rocks that may record changes in ancient Martian lakes and climate. These samples help scientists piece together whether Mars once offered long‑lasting environments that could have supported microbial life.

All of this unfolds against the backdrop of an increasingly crowded Mars exploration landscape, summarized by The Planetary Society’s catalog of every mission to Mars, with multiple active orbiters and rovers continuing to map, measure, and monitor the planet. Their ongoing observations, combined with MAVEN’s atmospheric legacy and the coming ExoMars rover, are converging on the same question: how habitable was Mars, and could traces of past life still be preserved in its rocks and soil?

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Mars is having a busy week, and missions across three space agencies are quietly reshaping what listeners can expect from the next era of exploration on the Red Planet.

NASA’s Perseverance rover continues to be the star of the surface campaign. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory reports that mission scientists are closely analyzing a particularly intriguing core sample nicknamed “Sapphire Canyon,” drilled from the ancient river valley that once fed Jezero Crater. According to NASA, this rock preserves fine-grained sediments laid down by long-vanished water, and early lab results suggest a complex geologic history that could be especially promising for the search for past microbial life. Mission managers are also refining the candidate list of rock tubes that may eventually be returned to Earth by the joint NASA–ESA Mars Sample Return effort, even as that larger program undergoes redesign to control cost and schedule.

NASA’s MAVEN orbiter, which has been studying Mars’ upper atmosphere and solar wind interaction for more than a decade, remains central to understanding how the planet lost most of its air over billions of years. NASA’s Mars program updates over the last week highlight MAVEN’s latest measurements of how bursts of solar activity strip away the thin Martian atmosphere, data that feed directly into models of long‑term climate change on Mars and help explain how a once‑wetter world became the cold desert Perseverance drives through today.

Europe’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter is also in the news, with the European Space Agency emphasizing new high‑resolution maps of trace gases like methane and water vapor in the Martian atmosphere. ESA reports that updated analyses released this week further tighten limits on methane, a gas that on Earth is often linked with biology, sharpening the puzzle of earlier, more ambiguous detections from ground‑based telescopes and past orbiters.

China’s Tianwen‑1 mission, which placed both an orbiter and the Zhurong rover at Mars, is again under scrutiny in Chinese‑language space media. While the Zhurong rover remains in an extended hibernation after failing to reawaken following a Martian winter, commentators note that the Tianwen‑1 orbiter continues to relay valuable images and science data. According to reports from the China National Space Administration, engineers are using this experience to shape China’s planned Mars Sample Return mission, targeted for launch later this decade.

All of these updates point to a coordinated global effort: orbiters dissecting the atmosphere, rovers reading the rock record of rivers and lakes, and engineers on Earth quietly preparing the first round‑trip voyage to another planet.

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Mars is having another busy week, with new steps toward future exploration and fresh activity from spacecraft already at the Red Planet.

According to Mars Daily, the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover has just passed a critical milestone on its path to a 2028 launch. Engineers at ESA’s ESTEC facility in the Netherlands completed a high‑temperature “bake‑out” of one of the mission’s main parachutes to ensure it is fully sterile before flight, reducing the risk of carrying earthly microbes to Mars. Mars Daily reports that this sterilization step is part of a broader planetary protection campaign aimed at keeping the landing site as uncontaminated as possible so the rover’s search for signs of past life is scientifically reliable. The Rosalind Franklin rover, a joint ESA–Roscosmos effort now reshaped after Russia’s withdrawal, is being reconfigured to fly on a new European lander, making each passed test a significant step toward finally getting this long‑delayed mission off the ground.

Mars Daily also reports that NASA’s Curiosity rover has begun a new drilling campaign in Gale Crater, targeting a fresh rock outcrop as it continues its slow climb up Mount Sharp. This new drill site is part of a layered sequence of sediments that record major climate transitions in Mars’ distant past, from wetter conditions to the colder, drier world seen today. By collecting powdered rock from these layers and feeding them into its onboard laboratories, Curiosity is refining the story of how long liquid water persisted on the surface and what kinds of chemical environments existed that might once have supported microbial life. Even after nearly 14 years on Mars, the rover is still returning data that reshape scientists’ understanding of Martian habitability.

At the same time, NASA’s Perseverance rover and its accompanying Mars Sample Return campaign remain in the spotlight. NASA’s Mars news site highlights ongoing analysis of rock cores cached by Perseverance in Jezero Crater, where an ancient river delta once flowed. These samples, which include finely layered sedimentary rocks and igneous material, will form the heart of the proposed multi‑mission effort to bring Martian rock and soil back to Earth for detailed laboratory study. While budget and design reviews continue, scientists are using Perseverance’s instruments to prioritize which samples represent the most promising records of past water and potential biosignatures.

Meanwhile, long‑serving orbiters like Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and MAVEN, listed by NASA’s Mars mission catalog, continue to provide high‑resolution imaging, climate monitoring, and relay services for surface missions, acting as the communications backbone that makes all of this activity possible.

Mars is not just a distant world; it is an active, unfolding story of engineering, science, and international collaboration, and this past week has pushed that story forward again.

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Mars is having a busy moment, and over the past week several new developments have sharpened humanity’s focus on the Red Planet’s past, present, and future.

According to ABC News, NASA is preparing to launch a pair of small orbiters to Mars called ESCAPADE, short for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers. The twin probes, built with the University of California, Berkeley, will ride a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket and then take an unusually energy‑efficient route to Mars, arriving in 2027. NASA and UC Berkeley scientists say these will be the first dual-satellite mission to another planet, flying in formation to create a three-dimensional view of Mars’ magnetosphere and upper atmosphere. ABC News reports that the spacecraft, nicknamed Gold and Blue, are designed to determine how solar wind strips away the Martian atmosphere, a key to understanding how Mars went from a world that could host liquid water to the cold desert we see today.

The Planetary Society’s analysis of ESCAPADE explains that by measuring how the atmosphere is blown off into space in real time, the mission will help researchers understand how fast Mars is still losing its air and how space weather from the Sun shapes the planet’s environment. That knowledge feeds directly into planning for future human missions, because it refines models of radiation hazards and atmospheric density that affect both landing systems and long-term surface habitats.

Meanwhile, NASA’s broader Mars campaign continues to evolve. NASA’s official Mars program page notes that the agency currently has multiple active Mars missions, including the Perseverance rover and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, while the MAVEN orbiter recently experienced a loss of signal in December but remains a crucial asset for studying the upper atmosphere and space weather around Mars. NASA’s Mars news feed has also highlighted the recent Mars flyby of its Psyche spacecraft in mid‑May, which used the planet’s gravity to adjust Psyche’s trajectory on its way to a metal-rich asteroid. That flyby doubled as a technology and navigation test that will inform future Mars-bound missions using similar gravity assists.

The Planetary Society’s catalog of Mars missions underscores how ESCAPADE will fit into a crowded orbital environment that already includes spacecraft from NASA, ESA, the United Arab Emirates, India, and China. In that context, the upcoming dual-orbiter mission is not just another Mars project; it marks a shift toward smaller, more flexible platforms that can target specific scientific questions at lower cost and higher cadence.

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Mars is having a busy moment in deep space.

NASA confirms that its Psyche mission, though ultimately bound for a metal-rich asteroid, just used Mars as a crucial stepping stone. According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Psyche spacecraft executed a close flyby of Mars on May 15, skimming about 2,864 miles, or 4,609 kilometers, above the planet’s surface. Mission engineers used Mars’ gravity as a slingshot, boosting Psyche’s speed and tilting its trajectory without burning precious propellant. While Psyche’s destination is the asteroid of the same name, the maneuver turned Mars into an unwitting launch pad, underscoring how central the Red Planet remains to broader exploration of the solar system. NASA reports that Psyche is now firmly on course for arrival at asteroid Psyche in August 2029, where it will study what scientists think could be the exposed metal core of an early protoplanet.

At the same time, a new Mars mission is taking shape with a very different target: the planet’s leaking atmosphere. In a recent episode of the podcast “This Week in Space,” space journalist Rod Pyle and co‑host Tariq Malik spoke with Dr. Robert Lillis about Mars ESCAPADE, a pair of small satellites designed to orbit Mars and probe how its atmosphere escapes into space. ESCAPADE—short for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers—will fly twin spacecraft in complementary orbits, each circling Mars roughly every four to six hours. Built largely by Rocket Lab under a tightly constrained budget and slated to launch on Blue Origin’s New Glenn, the mission will use in‑situ instruments to measure charged particles and magnetic fields around Mars.

Dr. Lillis explains that by comparing measurements from two locations at once, ESCAPADE can track how solar wind and space weather strip away the upper atmosphere, molecule by molecule. That process is central to the big question that still defines modern Mars science: how a world that appears to have been warm and wet early in its history became the cold, dry planet listeners see today. The mission is targeting arrival at Mars in 2028, promising a high‑science, low‑cost complement to larger orbiters and rovers already at work.

Put together, Psyche’s gravity‑assist flyby and the coming ESCAPADE mission highlight a new phase of Mars exploration. The planet is no longer just a destination; it’s a hub—shaping spacecraft trajectories, testing new technologies, and anchoring a growing effort to understand how planets live, evolve, and sometimes lose the conditions for habitability.

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Listeners, exciting breakthroughs in Mars exploration have lit up the past week. NASA's Curiosity rover kicked off a new drill campaign at the Atacama site on April 29, targeting layered-sulfate bedrock in Mount Sharp to uncover clues about Mars' watery past, according to Mars Daily reports. Just two days ago on May 1, the European Space Agency completed heat sterilization of the 35-meter parachute for the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover at ESTEC in the Netherlands, a key step for planetary protection ahead of its 2028 launch, Mars Daily confirms.

NASA's Perseverance rover made waves with stunning 360-degree panoramas from April 27, alongside Curiosity, revealing contrasting views of the Red Planet's ancient formation and potential for life, as detailed in NASA Science Laboratory updates. Perseverance also detected an unexpected signal—tantalizing evidence of lightning on Mars for the first time—cracking open secrets of the Martian atmosphere, per recent Astrum analysis.

Meanwhile, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory tested a prototype lithium-fed magnetoplasmadynamic thruster, a game-changer that could slash travel times to Mars for future human missions by powering advanced nuclear electric propulsion. Curiosity's latest rock analysis from 2020, highlighted in fresh reports, boasts the most diverse organic molecules yet found on Mars, fueling hopes for ancient life signs.

These missions—Perseverance hunting samples, Curiosity drilling deep, and ExoMars gearing up—bring us closer to answering if life ever thrived on the Red Planet and how we might one day live there.

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Mars exploration continues to accelerate with major discoveries and developments unfolding across multiple active missions. NASA's two rovers, Curiosity and Perseverance, recently captured sweeping 360-degree panoramas from opposite sides of the planet, revealing Mars' ancient geological and climatic history spanning billions of years. The rovers are located 2,345 miles apart, each providing unique perspectives on the Red Planet's formation and its watery past.

In a significant scientific breakthrough announced this week, analysis results from a rock that Curiosity drilled and analyzed back in 2020 have revealed the most diverse collection of organic molecules ever found on Mars. After years of laboratory work, researchers confirmed these findings, strengthening the case for past microbial life on the Red Planet. This discovery underscores the importance of Curiosity's ongoing mission, which marked 13 years on Mars in August 2025.

The Perseverance rover is making its own headlines with cutting-edge technological advances. NASA recently demonstrated that Perseverance completed its first artificial intelligence-planned drives on another planet in early December. This represents a major milestone in autonomous exploration, as generative AI created waypoints for the rover to navigate—a task that typically requires human rover planners analyzing terrain and sketching hazard-free routes from Earth. Due to significant communication lag across the vast distance to Mars, real-time remote driving remains impossible, making this autonomous capability essential for mission efficiency and expanded exploration.

Meanwhile, NASA faces challenges with its MAVEN spacecraft, which has orbited Mars since 2014. A NASA anomaly review board convened in mid-February began investigating the spacecraft after it ceased transmitting on December 6. The board is evaluating recovery efforts and assessing the probable current state of MAVEN and prospects for restoration.

Looking ahead, Mars exploration is expanding globally. China is planning a series of missions launching in 2030 that will return a sample from Mars, joining NASA's Perseverance, which is the first step in a proposed roundtrip journey to bring Martian samples back to Earth. The European Space Agency and Roscosmos continue operating the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, mapping Mars' atmosphere and contributing valuable data to the international scientific effort.

These developments demonstrate that today's Mars missions are not only searching for evidence of ancient life and understanding the planet's climate and geology, but also preparing the groundwork for eventual human exploration. As listeners continue following these exciting developments, the Red Planet reveals more of its secrets with each passing day.

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Listeners, exciting breakthroughs from Mars exploration are lighting up the news in the past week. NASA's Curiosity rover has uncovered the most diverse collection of organic molecules ever found on the Red Planet, according to a NASA Science announcement on April 21, 2026. After years of lab analysis on a rock drilled in 2020, this first-of-its-kind chemical test reveals complex organics that could hint at Mars' ancient chemistry, as detailed in Mars Daily on April 23, 2026.

Just two days ago, on April 23, Mars Daily also reported Curiosity's latest findings of diverse organic molecules in a groundbreaking test, pushing the boundaries of what we know about potential building blocks of life. NASA's Perseverance rover captured a stunning panorama on February 2, 2026—the 1,762nd sol of its mission—using navigation cameras to showcase the Martian landscape, per NASA Science updates.

These discoveries build on ongoing missions like Perseverance's sample collection for future return to Earth and the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter mapping the atmosphere. While no launches occurred this week, the organic molecule news underscores Mars' habitability puzzle, with rovers like Curiosity and Perseverance actively hunting signs of ancient life.

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket launched NASA's Blue and Gold satellites toward Mars in November 2025 for an 11-month atmospheric study, as covered by DWS News. Future plans include NASA's Escapade twin orbiters and international ice mapping efforts by NASA, CSA, ASI, and JAXA.

Stay tuned for more as these missions reveal Mars' secrets.

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