Earlier this week, the Odyssey orbiter flew over the Phoenix landing site in attempts to get a response from the lander and it had gone silent. The Pheonix landed on mars two years ago yesterday, May 25, 2008. Its primary goals were to look for microbial life and examine water on the red planet. Though the lander is now dead, its mission was a success and met its initial goals as of August 2008. It managed to successfully return data about Mar’s surface chemistry, weather, climate, and some landscape details. On November 2nd 2008, it returned it’s last signal : 0101010001110010011010010 1110101011011010111000001101000, or ”Triumph”.

Another interesting bit about the Phoenix is that it bears the first “hello from planet earth” disc for Mars. Similiar to the one that was put on the Voyager II, (currently the furthest human made object from earth), it contains information about humans, voices, and other archives of human information. While we know of no life on Mars just yet, we should never assume its lifeless. In the Cosmos chapter “Blues For a Red Planet”, Carl Sagan wrote, “If there is life on Mars, I believe we should do nothing with Mars. Mars then belongs to the Martians, even if the Martians are only microbes.”

I hope to do a lengthy post about Mars soon and the cool stuff we’ve done with our colder and redder sister planet.

More Info : http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phx20100524.html