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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."
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
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?
It was named Phoenix as the mission was originally scrapped after the polar lander crash. When they revived the project they renamed it Phoenix. It's also unlikely that it will be revived in the next martian summer. The reason being that where the rover is, it will be cold enough for the solar cells and other components to be destroyed.
IIRC they expect carbon dioxide to freeze onto the solar panels and break them off.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I still find that scene creepy and unnerving. It's even more unnerving than the book's description (or at least how I recall it -- it's been a few years since I read it), where the modules were completely removed and floated around the room. Bowman did what he had to do, but watching the lobotomization of another thinking being is still uncomfortable.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Well done Phoenix.
Sure...but also mad props to Peter Smith, Bill Boynton, and Mike Hecht, as well as Kevin Burke, Lori Shiraishi, Heather Enos, and all the others soon to be known only as "et al".
Not dead, just sleeping. Remember that HAL was woken up in 2010.
See my journal, I write things there
The story is full of these kinds of references, another famous one is to move the letters H.A.L up one in the alphabet and you get I.B.M (although Clarke claims it was a coincidence). I as in high school when the movie came out, it was required reading and we went to the theater to watch it (Kubrick hadn't done "Clockwork Orange" so nobody was freaked out by his name). Most of the philosophical stuff went straight over our heads but the special effects left an impression. Fourty years later and I get the philosophical stuff but the special effects would seem to indicate Kubrick was on acid.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.