Mars Lander 'dies' in arctic dust storm

Mars Lander 'dies' in arctic dust storm

www.telegraph.co.uk

Mission engineers have not heard from the lander in more than a week after a raging dust storm blocked sunlight from reaching its solar panels.

Ground controllers will direct two satellites orbiting Mars to listen for Phoenix for several more weeks, but the chances that it will respond are slim.

"We are actually ceasing operations, declaring an end of mission operations at this point," said project manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which managed the $475 million mission.

The craft's demise was not unexpected. Unlike its hardy twin rover cousins Spirit and Opportunity, which are approaching their fifth year near the red planet's more hospitable equatorial region, Phoenix's days were numbered from the outset. With sunlight waning and winter encroaching the arctic plains, scientists had said it was a matter of time before Phoenix would freeze to death.

(visit the link for the full news article)

I would have thought the engineers who worked on the Mars Lander would have planned for such eventualities such as a dust storm. It doesn't make sense that it would have been "killed" by something so obvious. Didn't it have protection from this?

Does anyone else get the feeling that the Mars Lander has just entered it's top secret phase?

Either way, how crushingly disappointing.

www.telegraph.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 11-11-2008 by dodgygeeza]

I read the BBC article earlier today and was somewhat suspicious of the wording, so I did a bit of futher digging.
Turns out, the lander has exceeded its expected life cycle by quite a few months. It was designed to last 90 days, much meant that by the time it shut itself down yesterday it was going for a full 2 months longer than anticipated, and there is still hope that it will be able to recharge it's batteries again when the Martian winter ends, although the chances are very slim.

reply to post by watch_the_rocks


You are right about it exceeding its life, but I get the feeling that the search for evidence of life and the conditions for life have been somewhat underwhelming.

Originally posted by dodgygeeza
reply to post by watch_the_rocks

 

You are right about it exceeding its life, but I get the feeling that the search for evidence of life and the conditions for life have been somewhat underwhelming.

I reeeaally really really don't think it "exceeded" it's "life" .. i think for PR, they slash it's life expectancy to as low as possible.. then tell the public WOW it's goin longer than we thought!!!!
JUUST in case it flops like.. after 120 days as opposed to the expected 360.. (hypothetical figures).. they say 90 as a buffer.
to NOT look stupid in front of the public AND other countries.

and if they DIDN'T think to do that.. then they've got amateur idiots for PR.

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on the other hand - 5 years for the mars rovers is really quite promising for eventual landing on mars by people.

I'm all for the exploration of space and our planetary neighbors, but c'mon. $475 million? for an expected 90 days of data collection. Just the thought turns my stomach. I realize my opinion on this doesn't really matter, but what a total waste of money.

I'm pretty sure that any and all of the landers/rovers did not succumb to Martian dust or malfunction.
I think a majority of ATS members know what I'm saying...

... The last thing the Mars Lander saw before it 'died' -

evidence

Wasn't this story covered in 'Transformers', the movie...?

THere is already a thread posted on this subject

reply to post by DroolsAlot


the MODS are linking to this thread

Originally posted by badmatty
I'm all for the exploration of space and our planetary neighbors, but c'mon. $475 million? for an expected 90 days of data collection. Just the thought turns my stomach. I realize my opinion on this doesn't really matter, but what a total waste of money.

if they said it's 90 days.. at 475mil
that's 5,277,777 tax dollars a day.
for 305,632,905 us citizens. www.census.gov...
that's $58 each US citizen is paying, per day.

They reached the Martian surface in January 2004 using landers featuring airbags and parachutes to soften impact. As of June 2008, both rovers are still active,

en.wikipedia.org...


if they landed in jan 04 and one is still in operation in jan 09
that's 5 yrs of activity = 1825 days
that's 260,274 tax dollars a day.

for 305,632,905 us citizens.
that's each person paying $1,174 a day.

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