Odyssey Begins Listening for Phoenix Today

Starting today, January 18, the NASA Mars Odyssey orbiter around the Red Planet will start listening to possible signals coming in from the Phoenix Mars Lander. Some experts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) believe that the station may become active this Martian spring, seeing how most of the winter is behind it. There is nothing to prevent the robot from coming back to life. If none of its hardware is damaged, then we could see Phoenix rising from its own proverbial ashes, Space reports.

However, analysts say that chances are slim to reawaken the lander. The first and most important reason for this is the fact that the robot was simply not designed to handle the kind of low temperatures that are found at the northern latitudes of Mars where it was deployed. Surely, it endured there during the planet's summer season, but mission controllers haven't heard from it since November 2008, when the Martian winter began. Scientists believe that this happens because the spacecraft's solar panels are no longer able to produce electricity, and keep it operational.

As its orbit takes it above the area where the Phoenix landed, the Odyssey orbiter will attempt to contact the research platform, and relay any potential message back to Earth. In addition to listening for any Phoenix signals passively, Odyssey will also attempt to actively connect with the lander. If there is the smallest amount of electricity left in the spacecraft, then experts are hopeful that they will be able to use it to gradually restore some of its systems to their original functionality. “It is very unlikely that Phoenix has survived the cold winter, but it is worth the chance to try,” the mission's principal investigator, Peter Smith, says.

The machine is fortunately programmed with something called the “Lazarus mode.” The function is built to allow the lander to boot up again if the level of electricity accumulated by its solar panels increases. But mission controllers are uncertain at this point as to whether this mode will kick in, and if it will have the desired results. The current attempted communication session will last for three days, during which time more than 30 passes will be made. If no result is obtained, two more sessions are scheduled for February and March, NASA announces.