NASA's Maven spacecraft around Mars has been declared dead after six months of radio silence. Maven was launched in 2013 to study the red planet's atmosphere. It fell silent in December after passing behind Mars. NASA confirmed Wednesday that the mission is over. Data indicated that the spacecraft went into a fast spin, which disrupted its orbit and drained the onboard batteries. A review board convened by NASA earlier this year concluded that the spacecraft is useless and unable to be recovered. Besides studying Martian weather, Maven helped relay information from NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on the surface.

Get set for a rare blue micromoon this weekend. It's when a blue moon that's also the most distant and smallest-looking full moon of the year rises. The brilliant star Antares will photobomb Sunday's spectacle for a celestial three-for-one. A blue moon occurs every two to three years when a second full moon squeezes into a single month. May 1 saw this month's first full moon. The upcoming full moon will be farther from Earth than usual at a distance of 252,360 miles. That will make the moon seem a bit smaller and dimmer.

Neptune's mysterious, far-flung moon Nereid may be the last of the planet's original companions. Scientists at the California Institute of Technology reported Wednesday that they used NASA's Webb Space Telescope to study the moon in 2024. Their observations suggest Nereid is no party crasher like Neptune's jumbo moon, Triton, which barged in from the solar system's frigid outskirts billions of years ago. Triton's arrival scattered the planet's original moons and wrecked everything, but these researchers believe Nereid survived by escaping into its extreme, elliptical orbit around Neptune. Their findings appear in the journal Science Advances.

A NASA spacecraft chasing a rare metal asteroid is swinging past Mars for a gravity boost. The Psyche spacecraft will slingshot past the red planet at more than 12,000 mph Friday. It will be an especially close encounter, with Psyche passing within 2,800 miles. Then it will be on to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that is home to its enticing target. All of the spacecraft’s science instruments will be on for the flyby. Cameras will snap thousands of pictures. The spacecraft is named Psyche like the asteroid it's after. The spacecraft should reach the metal-rich asteroid in 2029.