NASA’s $600+ million MAVEN orbiter swerved to avoid slamming into a Martian moon

Space is a big, mostly empty place, but every once in a while a pricey piece of Earth machinery ends up in a tight squeeze with a celestial body. That's just what happened to NASA's MAVEN spacecraft which is currently in its third year of orbit around Mars. NASA confirmed this week that it was forced to perform an unplanned maneuver with MAVEN to prevent it from slamming headlong into Phobos, the largest of Mars' moons.The MAVEN — Mars Atmospheric and Volatile Evolution — orbiter, wh