Phoenix succumbs to global cooling

NASA thinks that it's Mars probe Phoenix is "almost certainly dead", apparently the victim of "the increasing cold and dark of an advancing winter." Via BBC News:

Phoenix's major achievement was in becoming the first mission to Mars to "touch water" in the form of the water-ice it found just centimetres below the topsoil. Chunks of ice were seen to vaporise before the lander's cameras.


Other key results included the identification in the soil of calcium carbonate, which on Earth is a chief component of limestone rock.

Phoenix also detected sheet-like particles, which were probably clays of some kind.

The significance of both minerals is that they form only in the presence of liquid water - which could have supported life.

(...)

Phoenix even recorded snowfall; and took more than 25,000 pictures, from the panoramas of its Arctic landing site to the atomic scale images of dust grains delivered to its microscope.

Phoenix was an historic mission. NASA says that the lander is experiencing temperatures of -100 Deg C. Now that's what I call global cooling!