NASA Mars: Try to Revive Frozen Phoenix Lander

Next week, NASA will begin attempts to revive the frozen Phoenix Mars Lander, which has been coated in ice in the Martian arctic for more than a year, to see if it can live up to its name and rise from the ashes.

The solar-powered spacecraft landed in the northern reaches of Mars on May 25, 2008, and spent five months digging up the Martian dirt looking for water ice, which it found just below the rusty red surface. The finding has implications for the possible past existence of life on Mars.

Beginning Jan. 18, NASA's Mars orbiter Odyssey will listen for possible, though improbable, radio transmissions from Phoenix. Mission managers aren't optimistic on the lander's chances.

"We do not expect Phoenix to have survived, and therefore do not expect to hear from it. However, if Phoenix is transmitting, Odyssey will hear it," said Chad Edwards, chief telecommunications engineer for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We will perform a sufficient number of Odyssey contact attempts that if we don't detect a transmission from Phoenix, we can have a high degree of confidence that the lander is not active."

Phoenix lasted two months longer than its original planned three-month mission, finally succumbing to the increasingly cold temperatures and coatings of ice in November 2008, when mission managers lost contact.