NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, which some time back scraped up direct evidence of water on Mars's surface, is slipping gently into the night. Not a surprise; the mission was always scheduled to last just a few months, and at this time of Martian year there just isn't enough sunshine to keep the batteries charged.
Rumor has it that the signal read "Yes We Can!" The future of NASA is going to be one out of approximately 50 million pressing challenges faced by the new President. Under the previous administration (what was that guy's name again? I seem to have repressed it), the agency drifted, ranging from embarrassing ideological scandals to hopelessly inept planning to blatant censorship on climate change to a depressing de-emphasis of real science. Obama, and whoever he appoints as NASA administrator, will have a very difficult job balancing competing pressures: rebuilding a science program that has been devastated by funding cuts, while also restoring our capacity to send astronauts into space, and doing so in a time of tremendous budgetary pressures. Darksyde at Daily Kos has a good post about what some of these challenges are, and some of the struggles of current administrator Michael Griffin. It will be very interesting to see what direction the agency takes; in a multipolar world, the U.S. won't be the only important player in space exploration and space science, but hopefully we won't just sit on the sidelines, either. (Did you notice the link to an article on Discover at the beginning of that paragraph? That's because, when I cut open a vein to sign our new blogging agreement in blood [don't worry, it wasn't my vein], part of the contract was that we would link back to the site in every single blog post we do. I'm sure nobody will notice.)
Mission engineers last received a signal from the lander on November 2, the space agency said.
