E
EarthlingX
Guest
SDC : Dead Spacecraft on Mars Lives on in New Study
By Denise Chow
SPACE.com Staff Writer
posted: 31 August 2010
07:29 am ET
Data collected by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander before it went silent for good on the Red Planet is providing valuable insight for a new study on the interactions between the Martian dirt and atmosphere.
NASA's Phoenix lander has been sitting idle in the Martian arctic since November 2008, when engineers lost the ability to contact the craft after its solar power supplies were depleted by the Martian winter. Photographs of the Phoenix lander from spacecraft orbiting Mars showed extensive damage to its solar arrays.
But now, Phoenix has a chance to contribute again thanks to a new study that draws on the data the probe gathered before it died. [Photos of Phoenix on Mars]
Vincent Chevrier, a research professor at the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, has received funding from NASA to study measurements made previously by the now-defunct Phoenix mission. Chevrier hopes to develop a better understanding of how dirt on Mars interacts with the planet's atmosphere, as well as whether these interactions ever produce liquid water.