Phoenix Week

No, not the Arizona city or the mythical bird. NASA is devoting this week, and the services of the Odyssey probe orbiting Mars, to listening one last time for transmissins from the Phoenix Mars Lander.

Odds are the extreme cold of the Martian polar winter has destroyed Lander's systems-- NASA has listened twice before and heard nothing-- but this week is high summer in the Martian arctic. NASA figures if Lander is ever going to have sufficient solar energy to transmit again, it would be now.

If nothing is heard from Lander this week, NASA will consider the spacecraft dead.