Mars Phoenix Lander May End Mission Prematurely

I hope not, and i dont know how reliable this information is, as its from Fox, and i cant find another source as yet.

It seems the problem they had with placing the soil in one of its 8 ovens, where they had to shake the arm to get the soil in, caused a short circuit, so they are treating the next oven test, as their last.







I suppose there are other instruments on board, cant they continue with them?

Edit, forgot to post link, here you go.

www.foxnews.com...

[edit on 5-7-2008 by Denied]

amazing, it can survive a take off, a year in freezing space then an atmospheric reentry, but when it gives itself a giggle it short circuits..

Don't bet on this explanation being the truth. Seems like things are always happening to the stuff that lands on Mars. The crappy track record is getting just a bit outrageous.

What crappy track record? Sure, if you go back quite a few years, they had a string of failures actually getting the damn things to land safely, but recently, with the 2 rovers still going stron (WAY past their initial expiry date) and the success of the phoenix lander (even with the short circuit), they have been doing an AMAZING job recently.

What do you mean that the short circuit explanation might not be the truth, what do you think caused the problem?

reply to post by sensfan

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I agree with sensfan (even though I'm a 'pensfan' )...If NASA wanted to intentionally end missions prematurely to hide information, then why would the 2 Mars rovers still be going 4 years langer than their planned mission (the rovers' mission was only planned to last 90 days, not 4 years).

[edit on 7/5/2008 by Soylent Green Is People]

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People

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I am not saying that i believe that NASA is hiding anything but maybe they left the other rover missions going for so long so that when they wanted to prematurely end the phoenix mission, people would make the argument that you just have.
Why argue your own innocence when others will do it for you?

The rovers have been wondering around a desert with red filters so bright it distorts the image. The phoenix landed in a mud puddle, I am guessing it took them by surprise. It did take a week or two before they confirmed what everyone else had already concluded.

reply to post by jhh

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NASA was not taken by surprise by the general composition of the soil at the landing site. NASA picked the Phoenix landing site because they were relatively sure there was water ice there (spectrascopic analysis from other Mars orbiters showed good evidence of that region having a lot of water-ice locked up under the soil.)

Granted, there have been some surprising detailed analysis of the soil from Phoenix, but it was well understood ahead of time that Phoenix would probably be landing on water-ice that is covered by an inch or two of soil -- that's exactly what they found, and exactly what they expected to find.