One last thing. This is nice.

Tweet from the Mars Phoenix team:

[We'd also like to note 1300 NEW followers since Phoenix went to sleep last week. Not one of you has dropped. Best group EVAR! Thank you!]

Even with the probe shut down, they're still updating us on new stories, etc. on the probe. As they put it, 'veni, vidi, fodi'--'I came, I saw, I dug'. And through digging it found ice and made other discoveries, putting it into the history books. I will remember the Phoenix mission fondly, if for no other reason than those Twitter updates.

Oh :( The little probe that could has faded to oblivion

Nasa Mars mission declared dead: Nasa says its Phoenix lander on the surface of Mars has gone silent and is almost certainly dead

It lasted two months longer than planned, found water ice in the soil, sent back over 25,000 pictures, filmed a dust devil, and found chemicals that are capable of harbouring microbes. I followed it on Twitter during the better part of its mission. Located in the high latitude near Mars' northern polar region, its systems were expected to shut down due to temperatures reaching -212 degrees Fahrenheit and the fading light, made worse by a dust storm.

As a mission, it was a great success, especially coming after two failures. See the graphic below for locations of the various missions. Click the pictures to enlarge them for better reading.


Goodnight.

This is pretty neat

Watch a dust devil spin in Martian arctic

YKWIA saw it on his news gadget yesterday, and then it popped up on my reader, too. I can't get the animated picture to run on Blog*Spot, so if you want to watch it without reading the news story, go to the source at:

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/273145main_15996-browse.gif