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This made my day
Oct. 15th, 2009 12:52 amThis really has made my day:
It's probable that Phoenix is a dead stick. It outlived its planned end-of-mission date in August 2008, giving a last 'peep' on November 2nd. The dim light of the Martian polar winter was too weak to charge its batteries, so after reboots and brownouts, Phoenix shut down.
It's been frozen in drifts of CO2 ice since then. In fact, Phoenix's lidar spotted falling snow in high cloud (this is water ice; the CO2 comes when it gets colder!) before it went down. It is likely that the winter has killed the old bird (Phoenix was not designed to survive the winter, and extreme cold is ever so bad for electronics), but it has a 'Lazarus mode' : if there's power, it'll try to boot and say hello. If the boot fails or the communications fail, it shuts down and tops up its batteries for a while before having another go; if Phoenix is capable of life, then eventually it should start up fully.
That would be awesome on a scale like unto the Incredible Rovers That Just Will Not Die.
And I just want to hear it tweet again. :)
@MarsPhoenix -- 1st day of Martian spring (north hemi) is Oct 26. The team will wait til January (& longer sunlight hours) before attempting contact.
It's probable that Phoenix is a dead stick. It outlived its planned end-of-mission date in August 2008, giving a last 'peep' on November 2nd. The dim light of the Martian polar winter was too weak to charge its batteries, so after reboots and brownouts, Phoenix shut down.
It's been frozen in drifts of CO2 ice since then. In fact, Phoenix's lidar spotted falling snow in high cloud (this is water ice; the CO2 comes when it gets colder!) before it went down. It is likely that the winter has killed the old bird (Phoenix was not designed to survive the winter, and extreme cold is ever so bad for electronics), but it has a 'Lazarus mode' : if there's power, it'll try to boot and say hello. If the boot fails or the communications fail, it shuts down and tops up its batteries for a while before having another go; if Phoenix is capable of life, then eventually it should start up fully.
That would be awesome on a scale like unto the Incredible Rovers That Just Will Not Die.
And I just want to hear it tweet again. :)
One of the penultimate posts from Phoenix: "Take care of that beautiful blue marble out there in space, our home planet. I’ll be keeping an eye from here. Space exploration FTW!" Brings a genuine tear to my eye. Take care under all that carbon dioxide snow, you hear.
