Preface: NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft lost communication with Earth in early December 2025, shortly after observing the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as it passed Mars in October, with the outage happening after MAVEN went behind Mars, though NASA has not officially linked the events, noting only that it was operating normally before the blackout and teams are investigating.

Background: MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) uses an Electra UHF transceiver for crucial communication relay services, acting as a “bent pipe” to send data from rovers like Perseverance and Curiosity back to Earth, significantly boosting data return rates for Mars surface missions, despite its highly elliptical orbit making it an important, flexible part of the Mars Relay Network alongside other orbiters like MRO and TGO.

Hypothesis: The Wow! signal was a strong narrowband radio signal .Every UHF narrowband radio signal is built around a carrier signal. A carrier signal at 1420.4556 MHz (the Hydrogen Line frequency) can definitely interfere with UHF communications, as it’s within the general UHF band (300 MHz – 3 GHz). If 3I/ATLAS did not arise naturally, then advanced civilizations could send carrier signals to interfere with MAVEN’s signals.

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