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The end of efforts to listen for phoenix with odyssey and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had been planned for the start of solar conjunction, when the communications between Earth and Mars-orbiting spacecraft are minimized for a few weeks.That period, when the sun is close to the line between Earth and Mars, has begun and will last until mid-December.
Brief
After nearly a moth of daily checks to determine whether Martian NASA’s phoenix Mars Lander would be able to communicate again, the agency has stopped using its Mars orbiters to hail the lander and listen for its beep.As expected, reduced daily sunshine eventually left the solor-powered phoenix craft without enough to keep its batteries charged.
The final communication from phoenix remoains a brief signal recieved via NASA’s Mars odyessey orbiter on Nov. 2.
The phoenix lander operated for two overtime months after achieving its science goals during its original three-month mission.It landed on a Martian arctic plain on May 25.
"The variability of the Martian weather was a contributing factor to our loss of communication and we were hopping that another variation in weather might give us an opportunity to contact the lander again," said phoenix Mission Manager Chris Lewicki of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif lander "
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