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Phoenix Mars Lander Declared Dead
SpuriousLogic sends in a sad note from the BBC: "NASA says its Phoenix lander on the surface of Mars has gone silent and is almost certainly dead. Engineers have not heard from the craft since Sunday 2 November when it made a brief communication with Earth. Phoenix, which landed on the planet's northern plains in May, had been struggling in the increasing cold and dark of an advancing winter. The US space agency says it will continue to try to contact the craft but does not expect to hear from it."
It will soon spring forth from the fiery planet to destroy us all! RISE PHOENIX!!! RISE!
The mission was scheduled to last just three months on the surface, but continued to work for more than five months.
I'll drink to that!
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
Did it sing "Bicycle Built for Two," slowing down and getting deeper as it ran out of power? Because that would have been awesome.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
When the Phoenix will rise from the ashes and be reborn!
Here's to the pheonix. May you rise again, in future missions.
http://www.edn.com/article/CA6465468.html
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
It didnt even knew who won the elections
...you know what a Phoenix does when it dies, right?
rj
I really think that these probes have made great strides forward. Hopefully there is only better things to come. It's simply awe inspiring.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Original source and lots of multimedia
Saddle up: Riding with Robots
He's dead, Jim.
Phoenix Mars Lander
Aug 2007 - Nov 2008
We will miss you.
Enjoy the cake, it is not a lie anymore.
Given that the planet Earth is batting only .385 on Mars missions, the extra 2 months of data makes up for it to some extent.
Since Mars does have a thin atmosphere, a probe is likely to be under far greater danger of being hit by random flying debris than on some airless hunk of rock like the Moon where only micrometeorites pose that kind of hazard.
Bye Phoenix, you gutted it out well!
Phoenix is just pining for the fjords.
"...The US space agency says it will continue to try to contact..."
They should get John Edward to help out.
Sig this!
I give a moment of silence....
-Steve "The Geek" Hencye
This thing will be reborn, like a Phoenix rising from Arizona!
So, it eventually wound down because the change in Martian seasons prevented the solar panels from collecting enough sunlight to keep it going. I wonder if once the planet swings back around into plentiful sunlight it will spring back to life, living up to its namesake.
I'm just wondering - what is gonna happen next summer? is there a chance that some stuff still works, after the CO2 ice thaws in the "spring"? or would the damage from the freezing be irriversible? what conditions are we talking about midwinter - about a meter of CO2 ice? what damage would that do?
VICTORY!
The most Illustrious Council of Elders has declared tomorrow a planetary day of celebration. K'breel, Speaker for the Council, spake thus:
(A small group of dissidents in the Press Corps reminded the Speaker that the Invader on the Plains had begun to stir, and that The Twin at the Crater was rapidly advancing to the southeast after having made an obscene gesture. They were about to inquire as to what progress had been made over the past two and a half years against these threats, but K'Breel had already torn the antenna shaft from the Arctic Invader's lifeless hulk and made a shishkebab of their gelsacs before their question could be been fully heard.)
This is going to sound really dorky, but I really enjoy hearing about the Mars landers. I get a kick out of getting a camera in the next room to send images to my laptop over the radio. When I was a kid, I built a WeFAX interface to my 8-bit Atari to pull weather satellite images down (I didn't have a HAM radio so couldn't actually do it, but it was cool to play around with the hardware).
Images from Mars. How frickin' cool is that? A quarter century later it still gives me this "anything is possible" feeling..
Apparently it ran into Megatron ...
It was the first rickroll from another planet!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
>The US space agency says it will continue to try to contact the craft but does not expect to hear from it."
Beep! Wait! I'm not dead yet! 010100101010010101001010010100101110....
maybe Martians do exist and they want their privacy and switched off the Phoenix probe so we can't spy on them.
Either that or John Byrne is taking over the Phoenix series and had Mastermind brainwash her for the Hellfire Club and she will rise as "Dark Phoenix".
Maybe there will be a Battle of the Planets and five orphan kids will join to combine their ships with the Phoenix probe into the Firery Phoenix? Ask Seven Zark Seven for more details.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
It is possible the lander is receiving insufficient solar radiation to keep its batteries charged in the middle of winter.
Another possibility is that key components may have failed due to the extreme weather conditions at the landing site, which is further North than any other landing location to date.
There is still a glimmer of hope that the lander might come back to life in 6-8 months as the weather improves, if it has not suffered a catastrophic failure.
In the 23rd century, it will be known as an entity named "P'NIX" whose new role is to return to Earth to unite with its Creator.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
As the NASA article mentions, you can find more info from the Phoenix team's official website: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/
Also, the Planetary Society has done a great job following the mission, and there's an extremely detailed update one of their members wrote based on a phone interview with the Phoenix project manager shortly after the last contact with Phoenix was made last week.
Here's a quick summary: Phoenix has been reducing operational tempo for several weeks. In anticipation of having too little power to run the robotic arm and inability to communicate in late November for a few weeks as Mars passes behind the sun, they hurried sample delivery to a few more TEGA ovens for analysis, but they still had one oven-load left to analyze when the dust storm hit that dropped power levels below a sustainable point. However, despite that, they had already met all of their operational objectives. The extra data would have been a bonus.
When they saw the dust storm coming, they tried to power down almost all non-essential systems, but weren't quite in time. As a result, the batteries drained completely and it "browned out." The next day, the batteries charged enough to wake up in what they call "Lazarus mode" and try communicating, but it likely missed the relay window with the orbiters. Over a couple days, they got some intermittent communications, and were hoping to be able to send instructions to properly time the wake-up for best chance at communications and best utilization of what little solar power its getting each day, but apparently that hasn't yet succeeded. They were hoping to get temperature and soil conductivity measurements periodically, and maybe even a few pictures of CO2 ice starting to cake up in the area.
It may still be in Lazarus mode, or something may have failed due to the thermal contraction of the electronics (ex: solder and circuit board material expand at different rates...too extreme of a temperature shift and things start popping apart) ending it for good. There is still some hope that Phoenix will survive the frigid temperatures and even the weight of a meter-thick layer of CO2 ice to awaken in the spring. That's what Lazarus mode was created for, but the hope of that has always been very small.
There's a really interesting tidbit about a microphone that's part of the descent camera. On a whim they tried to use it a couple weeks ago to record wind sounds, but it didn't start up. Then one of the team members had a conversation with blind man who pointed out that he'll never see a picture of Mars, so he had really been hoping the microphone would work so he could experience it through sound. That really motivated the team to try the microphone again, but unfortunately, it sounds like they didn't have a chance with that either.
I've been following this mission on a nearly daily basis since landing. It's been neat to see Phoenix in action, and no doubt a busy few months for the team. I'm sure they'll feel somewhat relieved to return to living by a 24 hour clock and have the leisure to analyze all the data and the 25,000+ pictures it returned. I'll never forget the shot Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter got of it drifting down to the surface with Heimdall Crater in the background. In my opinion, it's one of the top 10 space images ever. The MRO team even claims that if you look really close at the full size version, you can see a black-spec a few hundred pixels beneath the lander that is the just-released heat shield falling away.
Well done Phoenix.
It's not true until the status is reflected on Netcraft.
They gave Steve Fossett like a year...
You can't take the sky from me.
Have one of the rovers pass by and give it a good whack. Works with most of the junk around my house.
Have gnu, will travel.
Bites the Martian dust, that is. But, i hope that when the seasonal sunlight increases, it phones home, and says, "You humans are DOOMED".... BUT, HOPEFULLY it will be a prank easter egg inrerted by a rogue NASA engineer.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
What's with BBC covering almost 25% of the video with a banner and BBC branding? FFS, fade it out or make it smaller man.
if some Martian someday is going to stumble across this machine and be "Damn Earthlings and their litter" and then destroy us.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
"The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one ... but still, they come."
Sorry, couldn't resist
... after all, is a Phoenix! :)
Maybe on next martian summer a nasa technician will receive a signal "I'm still alive!"
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
The next sci-fi movie set on Mars sees a frozen Phoenix, covered in silvery ice and caked in dust around the landing legs being patted by a gloved hand (or an alien claw)
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
I saw this before leaving for work this morning. BBC spin: lander dead, implied failure of mission.
Don't let the fact that it outlived its life by two months cloud a good story.
I wonder if we would be better off putting up solar array around mars, and then beams power down. These landers and rovers could then have super capacitors for storage.This approach would allow us to re-use a major subsystem across multiple systems. The nice advantage is that it would allow future explorers to have power all over the planet.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I love all these naysayers parroting about on the subject, when the fact is the lander survived to-design spec, and met mission goals. What, you people need every Nasa project to last as long as the rovers, or it's somehow not a success?
Phoenix was destined to die, regardless of the dust on solar panels problem. It's located in a much colder area of Mars than the rovers, and doesn't have radioisotope heaters (the rovers do). It outlasted the design goal of 90 days operation, so I'm quite happy for them.
What's wrong with being designed for a short life?
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
If it weren't for the superstitious anti-fissile hysterics, Phoenix would have RTGs and plutonium pellets to keep it operational and warm. It could even have spotlights to take images throughout the Martian winter, showing us just how deep the snow and CO2 ice get. 700 billion bail-out for banks and nothing for space exploration. What we could have done with just 1% of that!
Maybe he's just waiting for godot...
"Sentry Mode Activated"
Bittersweet..goodbye Phoenix, you served us well...
Katie
Phoenix