Scene Context: After the event, the crew sees orbiters around Mars vanishing from telemetry, entering safe mode, or completely failing, which destroys the landing navigation loop.
Essence of the Phenomenon: High-energy particles can cause single-event effects in electronics: bit flips in memory, logic glitches, latch-ups, transitions to emergency modes, or even irreversible component damage. For spacecraft, "safe mode" is a normal defensive reaction when the flight computer no longer trusts its own state.
Scientific Basis: NASA explicitly describes a single-event upset as a change of state caused by a single energetic particle strike, and safe mode as typical spacecraft behavior in response to such anomalies. These faults can be triggered by both cosmic rays and particles associated with solar events. During severe solar storms, real instances of Martian orbiters entering safe mode and losing specific instruments have been observed.
Current Limitations: A single satellite does not necessarily "burn out" from every major flare: much depends on its architecture, shielding, radiation tolerance margin, orientation, and the nature of the event itself. Therefore, the simultaneous mass loss of a significant portion of the network is a scenario depicting a very severe solar event, not an automatic consequence of any X-class flare.