International Spaceflight Museum

Image : Courtesy NASA

Today (10th November 2008), communication was lost with the Mars lander Phoenix. The mission operations centre believe it has finally succumbed to the extreme cold of the Martian winter. The mission, which went way beyond its original operational time of 90 days, cost nearly $500 million but everyone involved with the mission believes what was gained was worth so much more. Over the time Phoenix has been in operation it has sent back terabytes of data including approximately 25,000 images of the Martian terrain, detailed images of the area around and under the lander and performed some groundbreaking (literally) experiments. Many with unexpected results. The data from the mission will take many years to fully analyse.

Perhaps Mars Phoenix has been the most media savvy Mars lander ever. Throughout the mission, Phoenix has been twittering to interested subscribers about the day to day goings on during its time on the “red planet”. So successful has been this venture that the lander won a “Twitties” award as the Smartest tweet. Other missions are now following in Phoenix’s tracks (OK, Phoenix has no tracks but that shouldn’t stop the puns), such as Cassini and the Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

Phoenix has arguably been one of the most successful missions to Mars ever.  It has far exceeded its original goal of operation for 90 days (Martian days that is).  But as the environment on Mars steadily gets colder, the lander will spend more of its precious energy keeping its instruments warm.  Well before the 3 month period next April when the sun will not rise at the poles on Mars, it will fall silent and the world will miss its day to day escapades.