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Published online 5 November 2008 | Nature 456, 8-9 (2008) | doi:10.1038/456008a
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Phoenix fades away
Mars lander scrapes up its last samples.
Tucson
In its final days Phoenix, the NASA lander that since May has been scraping at subsurface ice in the martian arctic, is blinking in and out of contact with Earth.
As temperatures plummeted to nearly −100 °C and dust storms and clouds obscured an enfeebled sun, the spacecraft last week missed several chances to communicate with satellites passing overhead, and plunged for the first time into a bare-bones survival mode.
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