Death on Mars By Mike Coughlin

The Phoenix Mars lander is dead. Here are a few quick project facts:
-It cost $428 million.
-Phoenix was active on Mars for slightly longer than five months (landed at the end of May, 2008).
-It was to analyze soil and take pictures.That's like trying to get over an ex-girlfriend for twice as long as you dated her.

Now, kudos to the scientists for getting the machine to operate properly on Mars -- something that has been hit or miss in the past. But you would think, for nearly a half billion dollars, that they could have come up with something a little more permanent.

Think about it; it spent twice as long getting there than it did in action. That's like trying to get over an ex-girlfriend for twice as long as you dated her. Pathetic, if you ask me. But I suppose the rocket scientists (ahem, nerds) at NASA won't really get that analogy.

The point of the mission was to analyze soil samples and take pictures. Meanwhile, solar panels would continuously recharge the batteries when sunlight was available. Well, darnit if a dust storm didn't block the sun! And it couldn't analyze some of the more "clumpy" soil. Seriously, they used the word clumpy. So basically, we got a bunch of pictures of Mars for $428 million. For that price, I'll build you a telescope that can get those pictures.

My Playstation Portable can go into sleep mode for about a month without draining the battery. It cost me $150. The Phoenix, a state-of-the-art piece of equipment that we spent millions of dollars on and sent millions of miles into space, can't even do that. Oh yeah, and it can't survive the Mars winter. So it pretty much sucks and was doomed from the start.

On the plus side, the scientists are in ecstasy over the soil it did analyze. Rocket scientists? Nah. More like rock scientists.

Photo credit: Mars [http://www.scientificblogging.com/variety_tap/maven_deuterium_and_a_mission_to_mars]