NASA regains contact with Mars spacecraft
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A photo released by NASA made by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed Martian rocks containing a hydrated mineral similar to opal. The rocks are light-toned and appear cream-colored in this false-color image taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera. The opal minerals are located in distinct beds of rock outside of the large Valles Marineris canyon system and are also found in rocks within the canyon. The presence of opal in these relatively young rocks tells scientists that water, possibly as rivers and small ponds, interacted with the surface as recently as two billion years ago, one billion years later than scientists had expected.
(AAP Photo/ NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)NASA regains contact with Mars spacecraft
LOS ANGELES – NASA's Phoenix Mars spacecraft regained contact with Earth more than a day after falling silent, but its days operating on the red planet are still numbered, mission managers said Thursday.
Waning sunlight and a dust storm this week drained the lander's power, forcing it to go into safe mode. It failed to respond to two wake-up calls from Earth but sent a signal late Thursday when the orbiting Odyssey spacecraft passed overhead.
Phoenix is programmed with a "Lazarus mode" that automatically causes it to reboot itself after losing power. Though Phoenix answered the latest call, it went back to sleep for another 19 hours to recharge its battery. Engineers expect the lander to survive several more weeks.
"We knew this was coming. It's bittersweet," said project manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Phoenix landed in the Martian arctic in May. During its three-month prime mission, the sun stayed above the horizon, allowing the long-armed lander to dig trenches in the soil and collect ice bits for its various instruments to analyze.
NASA extended the mission in hopes of getting the most science out of the spacecraft before it dies.
In recent days, the weather at Phoenix's landing site has worsened. Overnight temperatures plunged to minus 141 degrees, and daytime temperatures reached only minus 50 — the lowest temperatures so far in the mission. The lander also weathered a dust storm.
Phoenix landed in a patch of ice in Mars' high northern latitudes to study whether the environment could be friendly to microbial life. It has found evidence that the ice may have melted at some point, although the soil is dry. It has yet to find the presence of organic, or carbon-based, compounds that are considered essential for life.
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In this image provided by NASA the Robotic Arm Camera on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander took this image underneath the Phoenix Lander 97 Sols after touchdown on Sept. 1, 2008. The view in this image is southward with illumination from the early morning sun above the northeastern horizon. NASA's Phoenix Mars spacecraft regained contact with Earth more than a day after falling silent, but its days operating on the red planet are still numbered, mission managers said Thursday Oct. 30, 2008.
(AP Photo/NASA)...
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