On October 9, 2025, the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft took a low-resolution image of the new interstellar object
3I/ATLAS from a distance of 56 million kilometers. This image, captured by its Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph, revealed the presence of hydrogen atoms in the vicinity of 3I/ATLAS.
On December 6, 2025, NASA reported
here that MAVEN lost communication with ground stations on Earth (see also the discussion with Rob Finnerty on Newsmax
here). Telemetry from MAVEN showed that all of its systems were working normally the last time it entered its orbit behind Mars but subsequently NASA’s Deep Space Network did not observe a signal.
