Mars lander succumbs to the winter

NASA said the Phoenix Mars Lander last made contact Nov. 2.

WASHINGTON - The solar-powered Phoenix Lander, which searched for signs of life on Mars, has succumbed to frigid weather and a dust storm after five months on the Red Planet.

The golf-cart-size probe survived two months longer than expected, making its last radio contact Nov. 2, NASA said yesterday. Windy, dusty weather obscured the sun and probably forced the probe to drain its batteries to power heaters, said mission manager Barry Goldstein from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Phoenix discovered ice beneath Mars's rocky red terrain in June, confirming theories that water, a key ingredient for life, exists there in some form. Tests showed that the alkaline soil could support plants such as asparagus if heat, water, and sunlight were provided.

"The mission is all about water," principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson said during the call. "At the terminus of our mission, we're now seeing snow falling and frost on the ground."

While it's summer on Mars, temperatures have dipped as low as minus 141 Fahrenheit. That's colder than the chilliest Antarctic day ever recorded.

Gusts of 25 miles per hour or higher have battered the probe, which cost $475 million to build and deliver to Mars. The journey took nine months and ended with a parachute landing May 25 near Mars's arctic circle.

During the mission, Phoenix took 25,000 pictures, from panoramas to pictures of the sky. A windsock measured the Martian breezes.

The probe watched clouds develop and dug trenches in the ice. An onboard microscope examined the color and size of dirt grains. Tiny ovens heated soil samples to look for trace chemicals that are the building blocks of life.

Temperatures will drop as low as minus 238 Fahrenheit in the next year, and the sun will sink below the horizon for three months. Mars's four seasons last about twice as long as Earth's.

BLOOMBERG