Mars Lander Reaches Its End

NASA officials have declared an end the Mars Lander mission. The Phoenix probe survived nearly three months longer than expected. Lower temperatures on the Red Planet have plagued the spacecraft as winter nears.

NASA has declared the end of the Mars Lander mission. Officials say the spacecraft has gone silent after losing power. The last message received from the space probe was on November 2.

"We are declaring an end of operations," said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager, in a statement from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Temperatures on Mars are dropping and the planet enters its autumn cycle with limited sunlight. The Phoenix Mars Lander uses sunlight to power its batteries. The spacecraft survived nearly three months longer than expected.

The space agency will continue to listen for the Mars lander in case it revives. However, scientists say that it is unlikely as the weather on Mars has been deteriorating since the start of autumn.

NASA's Mars Exploration Program are pleased with how the lander performed. The Mars lander collected rich data which scientists are still analyzing.

"Phoenix has given us some surprises, and I'm confident we will be pulling more gems from this trove of data for years to come," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Phoenix was the second probe to verify that ice existed on Mars. NASA's Mars Odyssey was the first to detect the presence of ice which was not verified until the Phoenix mission.