I asked this question awhile ago, but I dont think It got answered. Im wondering if there has ever been any observation's done with any of the orbiters of the phoenix landing site, or close of past seasonal ice buildup in the winter?. I have yet to find any images of that.

There's one HiRISE image labeled "Phoenix Landing Site Nighttime Photometry" with phase angle 92.7º:
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_009284_2915

And, all these images are around Phoenix Landing Site:
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/geographikos...=233&q4=235

I.e.: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_007418_2485

I can never keep the Martian seasons straight - is it almost a year till the sun rises again and we can see the ice buildup?

The press-release image, Declining sunlight for Phoenix lander graphs over a few Earth years, showing the hours of sunlight, and noting Phoenix-mission sol numbers, and a few earth dates.

First sunlight looks to come about mission sol 400, middle of the ice encasement. I don't know when there'd actually be enough light at the right time to image the ice from orbit. It's about a year from now when Phoenix will be in vernal equinox and encasement will be waning.

Just wait for a full moon from Deimos or Phobos to brighten things up.

...nice thought, but I don't think that they're even ever visible from Phoenix's location.

They are (just) visible - Deimos up to about 14 degrees above the horizon, Phobos about 1 degree.

Andy

Beautiful Phoenix model on display at JPL...

http://phoenixpics.wordpress.com/2008/11/2...y-i-met-phoenix

NASA Finishes Listening For Phoenix Mars Lander.

Rest in peace.

This marks the first time that communications have ended with a successful lander since the demise of Pathfinder, 10 years ago. Astonishing.

Even more astonishing is the possibility (small, I know) that Phoenix may not be permanently dead. There is always the Lazarus mode -- we may hear from her again in the Martian spring.

Mind you, I don't expect Phoenix to survive the winter. But there is a chance. If we do hear from her again, it's going to be an amazing day here at UMSF.

-the other Doug

If I recall correctly, when Phoenix is encased in ice, it's electronics will become extremely brittle and prone to cracking. If the electronics crack, Phoenix is irreparably dead. If Phoenix somehow survives, I'll be very delighted! (though I don't expect it).

Here are 2 hi-res pics of Phoenix hardware on the Martian surface, made of summarizing L/R pics to gain some details : sol 111 for the heatshield and sol 114 for the backshell. Enjoy
Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

I was thinking about all the different scales at which Phoenix observed Mars (main camer, robotic arm camera, optical microscope, atomic force microscope) so I put together this very crude sketch of a video.

Maybe someone who knows what they are doing could take this idea and make a very cool zoom video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2DDFEfXujM

Found this excellent article...

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081210/ful...html?s=news_rss

Very good stuff...

Thanks Stu,
A great (and at places personal) account of the mission, with some details on the TEGA door problems I was not aware of.
The accompanying editorial "What next for Mars" is also quite interesting !

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v456/...ll/456675a.html

October? October is now...

Check the PHX twitter feed - they're going to wait till the sun is higher - lots of nice power - and try then.

Twitter? What's Twitter?

Thanks Doug...

That's why I still have phoenix running on http://www.dmuller.net/realtime/mars.php

"We are going to attempt to contact Phoenix after the new year. Just next week we are planning to get together and finalize plans as to when. Not very likely we will hear anything back however!"

Hey! I was able to recover contact with Barry Goldstein today...who knows what might happen with Phoenix in January?

I'm waiting for a Hi-Rise picture.

If they can contact it, which is of course doubtful, I hope that at the very least they can get it to send back the remaining data that was left stranded when contact was lost.

will this click and make a sound ( twitter? ) when( if) she wakes up?

If the contact is successful there will be a chorus of "I knew it all along, I had a feeling" from the armchairs gathered round. So I'm going to remove myself from that crowd and state right now that I believe there is a fairly good chance that Phoenix WILL be operational when the sun comes back up again. Call me naive. Call me a foolish optimist, but I believe that sound reasoning has driven me toward that conclusion.

I'm gonna give her a 50/50 shot @ waking up for one reason: Don't think that we have a good understanding of the insulating properties of CO2/H2O calthrate frost, or even what the precise composition of the frost that covered Phoenix ultimately was. Might've eased her a bit more gently into peak low temp than otherwise, which in turn might have put less stress on electrical connections.

I hereby claim the coveted "Most Desperate Rationalization For Hoping That Phoenix Made It" award!

But...were there any doubts?
I'm with you on this Dan, that winter ain't that harsh...

With respect to data left stranded: it'd be nice to get, and I think that it is technically possible (ie, the issue is lander survival not loss of data despite a miracle wake up). As far as I recollect, all that was successfully acquired but left on board was Sol 148 MET data and sol 149 lidar data. I suppose there's a chance of access to half of the safe mode engineering data from the lazarus cycles (which half depends on which side of the electronics works first). And there may be some more engineering data on the last TEGA fault--but TEGA has no role in possible hospice mode science, so that might serve only as a cautionary tale for the future.

One small silver lining is that orbiter pass data volumes the last sol exceeded available flash storage--so everything commanded for downlink made it down. Phoenix was unlike MER in that respect, with little flexibility to defer downlink to a later sol.

Is there any potential risk associated with trying to contact her too early? In other words, if they tried to contact her now and failed, could that compromise future attempts? The only thing I can think is that attempting contact before she's ready could trigger an inadvertent low-power fault by overburdening what's sure to be a tenuous power situation. This, of course, assuming she's able to respond at all. Is there any other reason that waiting until January is advised?

I think the negatives are things that would happen anyway -- there will be many brownouts while trying to wake up, under any scenario with a good outcome. I'd guess a major factor is that the people involved have other mission critical or mission relevant jobs and you have to pull them away. Their time is a money cost, and an opportunity cost to a functioning or planned mission. So, you wait until the odds of getting something for their effort is significant.

Thanks, Deimos. Operational costs... I wasn't thinking along those lines. I suppose that pulling together the personnel, facilities, and resources necessary just to attempt contact would have so much overhead as to make anything less than a dedicated effort not worthwhile.

Me too, soo see if the solar panels have snapped under the ice load. Then, no more power available for her and the debate is over

There have been two since spring - but I've not had enough chance to really hunt for Phoenix in them.

MRO with these safe modes isn't helpful for now

Long-Silent Mars Lander is Broken and Dead, Photos Show

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/phoen...oto-100524.html

MRO images show that the solar panels on Phoenix were damaged by a heavy coating of dust and ice during the Martian winter, as predicted.

Oh, and tomorrow marks the 2-year anniversary since Phoenix successfully landed on the Red Planet

Well, after looking at those images side by side, this does not bode well for chances of spotting Mars Polar Lander. After only one winter basically all objects "merged" into their surroundings. To say nothing of the parachute.

Yeah, really. That's a very dramatic difference over one Martian year.

Even if it is eventually found, it seems unlikely now that we would be able to determine anything useful about the landing circumstances (unless it was a high-velocity impact). Phoenix is nearly unrecognizable already; can't even tell that the panels had once been fully deployed. Wonder how long until the landing struts might possibly give out?

The parachute is totally invisible now, extraordinary.

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/images/2010/...16_2485_cut.jpg

As others have said, quite obvious why we haven't found MPL yet.

I guess there's still some hope of finding the early Soviet landers & Beagle II since presumably they're subject to dust deposition alone, but this makes me much less optimistic.

I think that the Vikings should be used for comparison here, and their parachutes were still visible, if I remember correctly

Squished by CO2

It almost looks as if the parachute was torn away from the backshell by winds! But the atmosphere is too thin for that to occur no matter how fast they blow, correct?
Will anything at all be visible after another winter, I wonder.

And a bit of H2O also, I'd say. IIRC, the frosts around V2 were thought to be a 6:1 CO2/H2O clathrate.

Interestingly, something like that would have been lighter than pure CO2 snow per 'absolute' unit of volume, if you know what I mean. (Have no idea how crystallization, etc. would affect the density of the actual deposits.)

My hypothesis of significant movement of the lander is not supported by the new images.

This makes strong statment about the weathering, erosional and depositional processes at work in the Martian polar regions. Truly an alien environment.

It will be very instructive to visit this "test plot" in a few decades...

--Bill

It would be informative from an engineering perspective to get a better understanding of exactly how they separated and where they landed. I wonder if it would be difficult to plan for a super-res sequence of 5 or 10 images taken at the exact same local time on roughly consecutive days. I think it would also be useful to track the shadows/shape on several occasions as the sun climbs higher toward summer. I guess that would exceed the boundaries of a HI-WISH request.

Working one final animation. It does seem the features I interpreted as Phoenix were indeed ice patches. The shading that caused me to think the lander was on its side is explained by the shadow of the lander partially covering an ice patch.

This is almost the same .gif as earlier, but with another frame. The post-arrival, and post-spring, and the most recent images are all aligned here.

Is it possible that the extreme cold of the Martian polar winter caused a degradation of the strength of the cords attaching the parachute to the backshell? If those cords were severed, then it wouldn't take so much wind to blow the parachute to another distant location.

Hi Hungry4info,

That is a nice animation - thanks!

That's very helpful Hungry, seems to me that I can see both solar panels still attached to the body of the craft on the latter two frames - they don't seem to have been snapped off.

P