LA CAÑADA FLINTRIDGE – Now that summer and sunlight are returning to Mars’ north pole, NASA has begun a campaign to see if the solar-powered Phoenix Mars Lander, which lost power over a year ago, has risen again.
Beginning on Monday, the Mars satellite Odyssey will begin to listen for signals coming from the Mars lander, which was sent to the Martian north pole to study ice and soil for evidence of life.
The chances of hearing from Phoenix again are slim, engineers admit. The lander was never intended to last longer than three months, and its system was not built to last through the harsh arctic winter.
“We owe it to Phoenix to have a good listen for it, and it would be remarkable if it survived,” said Chad Edwards, chief telecommunications engineer for the Mars Exploration Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.
Phoenix spent five months in 2008 – two months longer than engineers expected – investigating the ice first spotted by Odyssey in 2002. Its long robotic arm scooped up Martian soil and water ice and dumped it into an on-board oven for analysis.
Astrogeologists found that the site where Phoenix landed was wetter and warmer millions of years ago than it is today.
Unlike the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, the solar-powered Phoenix Mars Lander spent its entire mission in one spot in the Martian arctic.
The lander conducted its mission near Mars’ north pole during the summer months when the sun never set. As the season wore on and there were fewer and fewer hours of sunlight, the lander finally lost power.
The last signal Phoenix sent out was in November 2008.
When Phoenix sent its last signal, the sun was out only 17 hours a day. Since then, Mars’ northern hemisphere has gone through fall, winter and spring.
Now that the sun is out 17 hours a day again and getting brighter, NASA engineers thought it would be an appropriate time to see if Phoenix survived the winter, Edwards said.
Odyssey will spend three days next week in an orbit around the Martian north pole that takes the satellite near Phoenix. It will listen for radio signals coming from the lander 10 times a day.
The lander has been programmed to begin sending signals when it wakes up from its long sleep. It sends signals out for two hours continuously, sleeps for 19 hours and then repeats the cycle.
Odyssey will continue its listening campaign in February, March and April.
“We’re still trying to figure out how many passes we need to do to be very confident that we didn’t miss anything,” Edwards said.
It’s such a long shot that at this point, NASA doesn’t even have a plan to operate the lander – if it does receive a signal, Edwards said.
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