NASA to conduct 3rd listening check on Mars lander

LOS ANGELES, April 2 (Xinhua) -- NASA on Friday announced it will check whether the Phoenix Mars Lander has come back to life after experiencing a Martian arctic winter.

The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said the Mars Odyssey orbiter will conduct the check by "listening" to the lander for a third time.

The listening period will last from April 5 through April 9, the JPL said in a news release.

While Odyssey listens to Phoenix during 60 fly-overs next week, the Phoenix site will be in around-the-clock sunshine.

The Mars Odyssey orbiter received no signal from the solar-powered Phoenix Mars Lander in the previous two listening check-ups conducted earlier this year.

The lander showed no sign of coming back to life in February when it had supposedly revived itself after the northern Mars winter.

The solar-powered Phoenix Mars Lander operated two months longer than its planned three-month mission in the Martian arctic in 2008.

It was not designed to withstand winter conditions. But JPL scientists want to check just in case the return of abundant spring-time sunlight to the lander site does revive Phoenix.

Odyssey is conducting three periods of listening for a transmission that Phoenix has been programmed to send if it is able.

The second listening period, with 60 overflights of the Phoenix site from Feb. 22 to Feb. 26, produced the same no-signal result.

Phoenix set down successfully on the northern Martian polar regions on May 25, 2008.

During over five months of operations on top of the Martian arctic plains, the lander made breakthrough discoveries by finding patches of water and nutrients that could possibly sustain past or current Martian life forms, if they exist.