Frost may spell the end of the Mars Phoenix Lander

With winter approaching Mars’ northern hemisphere, and soon to blanket the planet’s Arctic region in months of darkness, the Martian Phoenix Lander will probably meet with a freezing demise, says Barry Goldstein of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

It is of course possible, though unlikely, that the probe will manage to reboot itself come springtime though:

Phoenix does have a built in reboot program that its designers call a ‘Lazarus mode,’ “where when energy comes back into the vehicle from the solar arrays – if and when energy comes – it’ll automatically try to reboot and try to communicate,” Goldstein explained. But he doubts that will happen. “I would be overjoyed to hear something come back from Phoenix; I’m extremely … I find it very, very unlikely,” Goldstein said. The reason Goldstein, and others on the Phoenix team, think it unlikely that Phoenix will make a comeback is simple: The lander has entered conditions on the surface beyond what it was built and tested to withstand.