Los Angeles: NASA's Phoenix Mars spacecraft regained contact with Earth more than a day after falling silent, but its days operating on the red planet are still numbered, mission managers said.

Waning sunlight and a dust storm this week drained the lander s power, forcing it to go into safe mode. It failed to respond to two wake-up calls from Earth but sent a signal late yesterday when the orbiting Odyssey spacecraft passed overhead.

Phoenix is programmed with a "Lazarus mode" that automatically causes it to reboot itself after losing power. Though Phoenix answered the latest call, it went back to sleep for another 19 hours to recharge its battery. Engineers expect the lander to survive several more weeks.

"We knew this was coming. It s bittersweet," said project manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

"Phoenix landed in the Martian arctic in May. During its three-month prime mission, the sun stayed above the horizon, allowing the long-armed lander to dig trenches in the soil and collect ice bits for its various instruments to analyze.

Phoenix landed in a patch of ice in Mars high northern latitudes to study whether the environment could be friendly to microbial life. It has found evidence that the ice may have melted at some point, although the soil is dry. It has yet to find the presence of organic, or carbon-based, compounds that are considered essential for life.
Source : PTI