NASA announces official death of Phoenix Mars lander
This lander won’t resurrect from its ashes: Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the planet research section of NASA officially declared the death of the Phoenix Mars lander that landed in 2008 on the red planet.
The most recent recordings that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft has made about the lander shows that there are serious damages on the Phoenix which probably caused by the cold winter on the planet. Last week the spacecraft flew 61 times over the Phoenix which was the fourth and last attempt trying to recover the lander, without any success.
Fuk Li, leader of the JPL Mars program announced: „The Phoenix has fulfilled its mission, and it operated even longer than it was planned. Although it finished its work, the scientific analysis of the gathered informations will take a while”.
The lander has arrived on the north pole of Mars on the 25th of May, 2008. Scientits have designed its lifetime for three months, but it did its job for five months before its energy supply ran down due the lack of sunlight.
Despite the cold winter,. still there was a little chance that it can remain operable, that’s why NASA wanted to save it.
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