Well today I was reading a NASA article on its recent speculation that their probe mentioned in the title has stopped working due to the very low temperatures of the martian winter. They will attempt contact using the Odyssey which is a satellite orbiting Mars.

The article also mentions that the probe lasted two months than its three month life expectancy. Space guards many secrets which are only made available to us by this technology that we send out, and since there are some restrictions on the technology we use, we cannot make it last as much as we hoped for. But 3 months life expectancy?

We need to work in other type of technology that can last longer and will have more functions (which would also include a bigger budget) in order to discover what other planets or even space have to offer. It is amazing though everything we learn from our environment.

Maybe mankind sees Mars as the next place to be at, but the Moon would be a more viable thing right now. Anyway, going back to the main subject, the Odyssey will do a couple orbits around Mars and try to see if the Phoenix probe is still working, if not, it will determine what functions are still operational and decisions will be made based on those results.

Here’s the link for that article:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phoenix20100111.html