(UPDATED*) Wires, NYTimes, Space.com etc: Mars Phoenix slowly freezing, shutting down as Mars’s north pole slides into a dark winter
Sad times all over on Mars. NASA has robots up there, dying. To be sure, the limping, doughty two Mars rovers named Spirit and Opportunity are naturals for the anthropomorphic roles of bravely expiring pioneers. They move around on balky wheels and with instruments getting sclerotic just south of the Martian equator; they are taken as females; they have those capital-lettered names. Such heroines. But a certain pathos also arises in reports on their distant mechanical cousin, the Mars Phoenix Lander. It sits near paralyzed by stiffening cold near the north pole. While the rovers conceivably could keep going, years after they were supposed to conk out, Phoenix seems sure to expire soon. It’s just five months old, but that’s two months longer than the putative mission. Nobody expects it to revive many months from now when the Mars arctic sun resumes shining brightly on its solar panels.
The news is that Phoenix mission managers are shutting down their creation’s instruments one by one to conserve the dribble of remaining power. For a short time this week, they lost contact with it. Still to be written are summary judgments on the success of the mission. It started well but faltered a bit as time went on. The shovel and arm that scooped up the icy soil for analysis could not deliver it efficiently to the machine’s chemical analysis chambers. Post mortems will come later. For now, the story is of the mission’s end.
Stories:
Space.com Andrea Thompson ; AP ; NYTimes Kenneth Chang reports that, last weekend, the last major experiment on the sampled soil was completed, with data sent back for anaysis now underway. Temperatures are falling to minus 141 F (about -100 C) ; Bloomberg Demian McLean wrote Wednesday that the lander has sacrificed an arm – its robot arm, turned off ; Bloomberg Michael Heath, Damien McClean later reported the communication blackout and its automatic descend into a coma-like safe mode ; Arizona Republic Anne Ryman ;
*UPDATE: LA Times John Johnson Jr. writes “the death watch is on…” ;
-CP
