Astronomy News
Dr. Neal Sumerlin keeps us abreast of happenings in the night sky and the progress of the new Belk Astronomical Observatory.
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Other Posts:
Describing the Indescribable (07/22/2009)
Total Solar Eclipse in July (06/07/2009)
Other Earths (05/20/2009)
Save Those Old Computers! (04/13/2009)
Play With Pictures from Mars! (04/13/2009)
Saturn in 2009 (04/13/2009)
The New Worlds (02/04/2009)
Christmas at the Moon (12/10/2008)
Potpourri of Space News (12/10/2008)
Night Sky Happenings (11/17/2008)
Power Sources for Space Probes (11/17/2008)
Pictures of Planets (11/17/2008)
Ice Geysers of Enceladus (09/22/2008)
Constellations (09/22/2008)
Happy Equinox Day! (09/22/2008)
More News from Mars (06/04/2008)
Search (but no rescue) on Mars (05/20/2008)
We lose a friend (05/03/2008)
Quiz winner! (04/29/2008)
Seeing and Patience (04/22/2008)
The World at Night (03/31/2008)
New Stars that are Really Old (03/14/2008)
Latest From Planetary Spacecraft (03/14/2008)
Lunar Eclipse Update (02/18/2008)
Aiming a Telescope (02/18/2008)
Observatory Update (02/04/2008)
Venus and Jupiter in the Morning (02/04/2008)
Total Lunar Eclipse (02/04/2008)
Messenger Mission to Mercury (02/04/2008)
R.I.P., Mars Phoenix Lander
Posted on 11/17/2008The last message from the Phoenix lander on Mars was received on November 2nd. It is probably dead and gone. The death was not unexpected.
Phoenix was sent to look for water (more specifically, subsurface ice) on Mars. There were very good reasons for believing that ice would be nearer the surface in the higher latitudes of Mars, nearer the poles, so Phoenix was sent to a location at latitude 68° north on Mars. The spacecraft is powered by solar cells, and it landed in the Martian summer, when the Sun is relatively high in the sky. As Martian autumn and (soon) winter sets in, however, the sun is lower in the sky, and the hours of daylight are decreasing, just as they are here on Earth. The power was insufficient to keep the batteries charged, and to keep the heaters running that prevent vital parts from freezing up. Again, just as on Earth, the higher latitudes are colder. On Mars this can mean temperatures as low as -170°F!
So the Phoenix is dead, and there is no fire for her to rise from. But she did her job, discovering abundant ice just below the surface. She had a scoop to dig as deep as a meter, but that wasn't necessary. You may recall this picture from an earlier Astronomy News, but here is a more complete version of the ice directly beneath the lander. Its landing rockets blew away the dust that covered that ice: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0811/PhoenixHolyCowMosaicAPOD.jpg
Mars is a geologist's (planetologist's?) dream laboratory. I remember as a young boy thinking that geology was surely the most boring of all the sciences-just a bunch of rocks! But if you know how to read the stories they tell, they reveal a tale of planet-wide change and upheaval. We're getting progressively better at cracking the code for the red planet.