After 11 years on Mars, NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft left with a whimper

“Over the course of the mission, MAVEN contributed to more than 8 percent of our total key relays scheduled by astronauts and passengers, but accounted for about 18 percent of all returns, demonstrating its value in returning large numbers,” said Tiffany Morgan, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program.

The network still has plenty of power to support the Endurance and Curiosity rovers, with one caveat.

“We have a surplus of resources, and the assets will change the amount of returns, and the operators will change their plans in terms of how they interact with the assets,” Morgan said. “There’s a little bit of a delay sometimes, because we don’t have a lot of resources, to get our science data, and MAVEN was very important in returning science data and operational data.

NASA is asking commercial companies to develop a successor to the Mars Relay Network. A new business plan, called Mars Telecommunications NetworkIt is expected to provide information and information about future NASA missions to the red planet.

“Instead of each mission developing its own communication system, we will create a structure that is purpose-built for Mars,” said Greg Heckler, deputy program administrator for NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation office. “It will be built on lessons from MAVEN, from other orbiters, from every mission that is working in this area, including current missions, and from other things that we are developing around the Moon.”

NASA wants the Mars Telecommunications Network to be operational by the 2030s. The organization released a request for proposals last month.

“I think there’s … a rush,” Heckler said. “I think that NASA establishing this foundation should be very important to continue the scientific work that is going on today and help us to do the great projects that are coming.”