Cape canaveral: After over a decade of atmospheric research around Mars, the MAVEN spacecraft has logged its final report, US space agency NASA announced Wednesday. The first mission devoted to observing the Martian atmosphere and its evolution, MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution), has ended after more than 11 years in orbit.

According to Anadolu Agency, MAVEN's original mission only lasted for one year, meaning it far exceeded scientists' expectations. The spacecraft was last heard from on December 6, when it experienced an unexpected loss of signal after it passed behind the Red Planet, NASA explained.

The agency stated that it convened an 'anomaly review board' in February to evaluate recovery efforts and assess the spacecraft's probable current state. It was determined that the spacecraft is not recoverable and is no longer capable of performing its science and data relay mission. Standard procedures were followed to archive the mission's entire dataset, and the official process to terminate the MAVEN mission has been initiated.

Launched in 2013, MAVEN reached Mars in 2014 and began studying the planet's upper atmosphere and its interaction with solar winds. Shannon Curry, MAVEN's principal investigator and a researcher at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder, remarked on the mission's contributions to understanding the Martian atmosphere and evolution. The science team is proud of the discoveries made during the mission.