NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander powers down for last time?

by Rich Bowden - Nov 2 2008, 19:13

NASA's Phoenix Lander is gradually losing power as the onset of the Martian winter causes it to drain its batteries.

The iconic spacecraft, the first to sample water on Mars, has been hit by dust storms and temperatures as low as minus 141 degrees Fahrenheit giving controllers no option but to put the craft into "safe mode" to conserve energy.

Mission managers say Phoenix finally responded to calls to wake over the weekend, sending a message to the orbiting Mars Odyssey craft. It had originally failed to respond to calls from controllers to revive from its "Lazarus mode".

Controllers say they are monitoring the situation, although they believe Phoenix's life is now limited to a matter of weeks. It first arrived on the Red Planet in late May.

"We knew this was coming," said project manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who described it as a "bittersweet" moment for the craft's managers.

Originally scheduled to serve just a three-month period on the planet's surface, Phoenix's mission was extended to continue the collection of valuable scientific data.

Though it did not establish evidence of life, past or present, on Mars, Phoenix was successful in using its long robotic arm to sample water on the planet.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, with project management at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver.

International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus in Denmark; the Max Planck Institute in Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

Around the Web