Phoenix: the bird is toast - November 10, 2008
Posted on behalf of Ashley Yeager
Phoenix is dead, and it’s highly unlikely that the Mars lander will rise from the ashes ever again.
After operating for more than five months, the lander stopped communicating with the Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on 2 November (see earlier Nature story, here). The dust storms that have been swirling around it for the last two weeks obscure the already-waning sunlight that could power Phoenix — and that’s what killed the lander, mission project manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said today in a press conference. 
The team has been flying Odyssey and MRO over the lander every two hours during the Martian daytime to check for any signs of life — all to no avail, Goldstein said. It will continue to check for vital signs for the next three weeks, he said.
Phoenix’s death came earlier than expected; the team had estimated it could maintain communications with lander until late November or early December. Still, “we shouldn’t be having a funeral, but rather an Irish wake to celebrate its success,” said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA headquarters in Washington.
And, the mission isn’t technically quite over, adds the mission’s principal investigator, Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson. Phoenix might not be able to collect more data, but that doesn’t change the fact that the team now has mounds of it to analyse, he said.
Smith remains optimistic that future data analysis will reveal the coveted signal of organic compounds and indirect detection of liquid water. Early results of the mission are currently under review and should appear in Science in a few weeks, he said.
To remember those glory days back in May when the mission had first landed, check out Eric Hand's time capsule of the Phoenix landing.
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Comments
What are the chances of it reviving in the spring? Is there a chance it is just hibernating, or will it end up covered in dust or with bits frozen into fractures by the winter?
Posted by: Felix | November 11, 2008 11:09 PM
From Ashley Yeager, author of the news item:
The chance that Phoenix might come back to life in the spring, which would be next October on Mars, is slim to none, Barry Goldstein said during the teleconference.
The lander could hibernate through the winter, he noted, but he is not sure that the glass-like materials in the solar arrays as well as the components of some of the other instruments on the lander will survive the Martian arctic winter. They will most likely crack as temperatures plummet to between –150° to –180º Celsius.
It's more likely Phoenix will be covered in dust and carbon dioxide ice and will never wake up again, he said.
Posted by: Alex Witze | November 12, 2008 05:21 PM