NASA says Maven spacecraft that was orbiting Mars has gone silent — manual luggage scale no battery
NASA MAVEN Silence: Why Manual Luggage Scales Win You don’t usually notice silence until it swallows a room. Even in a control center, where quiet equals focus, there’s always a hum—fans, whispers, keyboards. Then a screen stops updating. A timeline freezes. A tiny heartbeat from deep space fails to arrive on schedule, and for a breath, everyone stares. Picture the team that watches over an aging spacecraft looping Mars. They know its pauses, its quirks, the way its orbit slips into shadow and back into sun. They’ve learned the dance of delayed contact—light takes minutes to cross the void, and patience is part of the job. But lately that heartbeat hasn’t shown up. The room feels smaller. The coffee goes cold. You can almost feel the distance to Mars pressing down, the way an airplane cabin feels heavier when the captain says there’s a slight delay and the aisle lights stay bluish and dim.