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Five months ago, it landed on the Martian surface — and into our hearts. It gave us soil analysis data, photos of the sky from the red planet, and even hope of extraterrestrial life. Now, with its power deteriorating, its sunlight exposure shrinking, and Martian temperatures dropping to almost -100°C, the Phoenix lander's time may be up. Project manager Barry Goldstein admitted "we're towards the end," and Phoenix even bid us a fond goodbye on its Twitter page. But that's the charm of robots; they never truly die. Phoenix might not literally rise from the ashes, but you can make sure its spirit never leaves you. More »
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It's the Phoenix Lander the way you've never seen it before, with all its private parts showing. This image by a NASA artist shows what Phoenix looked like before it opened up and unfurled all its lab equipment and other tools. Every single piece of equipment that Phoenix brought had to be packed into a very tight space, and you can see how elegantly the robot was engineered in order to accomplish this. Click the image to see full-frontal Mars bot. [via NASA] Thanks, Chris! More »
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Much of the excitement over the Phoenix Lander of late has focused on its discoveries of water on Mars. The Phoenix has touched Martian ice, found the planet’s internal plumbing, and even seen it snow. Now the team is preparing the Phoenix for a different sort of first, as NASA scientists prepare to turn on its microphone and, for the first time, listen to the sounds of Mars. More »
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The Phoenix Lander look a series of photographs of the polar skies this week, and researchers have turned them into a short movie that gives you a shivery sense of what it would be like to stand under Martian skies. Those are ice water clouds, swooshing overhead very much the way clouds do on Earth. Now you can picture what it would be like to be there with Phoenix, with wispy clouds drifting overhead as you dig deeper into Martian permafrost in search of water. [The Great Beyond] More »
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Now that the Phoenix lander is up there digging trenches on Mars, conspiracy theories are starting to swirl. This week, even the mainstream media was abuzz with reports that NASA was withholding a major announcement — the discovery of life (or evidence of past life) on Mars. The wild speculation forced NASA to go ahead and reveal what they did find, or might have found, or think they found — and what it all possibly maybe potentially means for the existence of extraterrestrial life. More »
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The space blogosphere is rightfully abuzz over some jaw-dropping images the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera has taken of the Phoenix Lander parachuting down to Mars (pictured) and then resting safely on the Martian surface along with its parachute and heat shield nearby (below). More »
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The Phoenix Lander, a robotic research station that will do experiments for three months in the Martian arctic, yesterday touched down on Martian soil. It will drill down into the planet's crust to figure out what kinds of water exist frozen at the Martian poles, and perhaps help lay the groundwork for a Martian colony or scientific outpost. The lander settled into place late yesterday afternoon, landing without incident near the planet's north pole. It will be doing chemistry experiments and sending back tons of data (as well as pictures like this one, of its robo-foot on the Martian dirt) for several weeks. Unlike the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, it cannot move around so it will just be focusing on checking out the Martian arctic. Learn more about the Phoenix, and check out a constantly-updated stream of photographs, on the Phoenix Lander home page. More »
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