Phoenix Mission Status Report
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander communicated with an orbiter Thursday. Engineers continue assessing the lander's status and steps needed for returning to science activities.
UPDATE at 4 p.m. PDT October 30:Phoenix communicated with NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter Thursday. The communication reinforced a diagnosis that the spacecraft is in a precautionary mode triggered by low energy.  Mission engineers are assessing the lander's condition and steps necessary for returning to science operations.PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA'S Phoenix Mars Lander, with its  solar-electric power shrinking due to shorter daylight hours and a dust storm,  did not respond to an orbiter's attempt to communicate with it Wednesday night  and Thursday morning.Mission controllers judge the most likely situation  to be that declining power has triggered a pre-set precautionary behavior of  waking up for only about two hours per day to listen for an orbiter's hailing  signal. If that is the case, the wake-sleep cycling would have begun at an  unknown time when batteries became depleted."We will be  coordinating with the orbiter teams to hail Phoenix  as often as feasible to catch the time when it can respond," said Phoenix  Project Manager Barry Goldstein at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.  "If we can reestablish communication, we can begin to get the spacecraft  back in condition to resume science. In the best case, if weather cooperates,  that would take the better part of a week."The Phoenix lander has operated at a Martian  arctic site for more than two months longer than its initially planned,  three-month prime mission.  The sun  stayed above the horizon around the clock during the prime mission, but is now  below the horizon for about 7 hours each night.Engineers at JPL and  at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver,  operate Phoenix  and the two NASA orbiters used for relaying communications with the lander,  Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey.The Phoenix  mission is led by Peter Smith of the University  of Arizona, Tucson,  with project management at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and development  partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver.  International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel,  Switzerland; the  universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus in Denmark; the Max Planck Institute in Germany; and  the Finnish Meteorological Institute. The California Institute of Technology in  Pasadena  manages JPL for NASA.