Like Jerry the Goldfish, whom I found doing the old back paddle this morning, the Mars Phoenix Lander has ceased communications after five months of operation. This is the seasonally dark time in arctic Mars, and there is a lot of dust in the air for some reason, so there is no longer enough power for Phoenix to keep alive. Engineers received the last signal from the lander on November 2nd.
It is possible, but unlikely, that Phoenix will 'phone home' again over the next couple of weeks, and NASA will be listening just in case.
Farewell sweet robot.
More like this
Where in that world is Phoenix
JPL Phoenix news site
Animation zooming in on Phoenix landing site starting from Olympus
Every few minutes I get an email from NASA telling me which button they've pressed on the Phoenix Robot, recently landed on Mars. And I'm only slightly exaggerating. OK, I'm exaggerating a lot.
The latest: Phoenix has been commanded to move its arm:
This is quite sad, really.
The goldfish thing is sad, too. How old was your goldfish? A healthy golfish ought to live at least 30 years. And are you sure it wasn't just overfed and bloated? (They tip upside down and float as if they were dead when they do that -- if you give them a couple of days with no food some "dead" goldfish make a miraculous recovery.)
You saw the video in transformers, the same thing for Mars Pathfinder...they exist!!!
He was really, really old.