The UA-led Phoenix Mars Mission has ended.
Mission officials announced this afternoon that they have permanently lost contact with the spacecraft, which has been on the surface of Mars since late May.
Over the past few weeks, Phoenix has been slowly losing power as the harsh winter took its toll on the lander. At one point, Phoenix was only turning on for two hours each day.
Mission officials had been having difficulty communicating with the lander for the past two weeks, losing radio contact with Phoenix at least once before.
Officials lost contact with Phoenix on Nov. 2 and were unable to reconnect. The lack of contact essentially draws the mission to a close, said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix’s project manager with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
Officials had planned all along for the mission to end this winter, when dust storms and dry ice are expected to claim the lander.
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The lander, which confirmed the presence of water beneath Mars’ arctic northern region, traveled more than 420 million miles to the red planet.
The mission’s daily science operations were led out of a facility in Tucson, making the University of Arizona the first public university to lead a NASA mission to Mars.
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