NASA Satellite Looks For Response From Dead Mars Craft 152
coondoggie writes "NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter will next week make a number of passes over the presumed dead Phoenix Mars Lander on the surface of the planet and listen for what the space agency called possible, though improbable, radio transmissions. Odyssey will pass over the Phoenix landing site about 10 times this month and two longer listening tries in February and March trying to determine if the craft survived Martian winter and try to lock onto a signal and gain information about the lander’s status."
Re:Pun! (Score:1, Informative)
No.
Re:Love the space program (Score:2, Informative)
Re:And so it goes (Score:3, Informative)
Catastrophic failures during descent didn't really reach Mars...
The shortest lived mission that touched down was the very first lander - Soviet Mars 3 probe. Stopped transmitting after around 20 seconds (but the data that were sent and external observation suggest it had the misfortune of landing in extreme dust storm)
Phoenix Mars Lander is no failure. It was known it will cease operations quickly (might even have been under CO2 icecap during winter)
Re:Love the space program (Score:3, Informative)
Good point. Another example: the military still uses the Browning .50 caliber machine gun, which has changed little since it first went into service in the 1920's.
Re:Love the space program (Score:2, Informative)
Vietnam you mean, no C-130s were built during Korea.