Frozen death looms for Phoenix Mars Lander

Frost forming
The frost that has already begun to accumulate in the area around Phoenix's landing site, as well as the shear cold temperatures will also affect the lander, though their impact will mostly come after Phoenix ceases operations.

Images taken recently with the lander's Surface Stereo Imager have shown pockets of frost forming on the ground, especially in the trenches that Phoenix has been digging, Taylor said.

So far, the frost hasn't formed on the lander — except for on the small mirror used to view the wind telltale at the top of the meteorological mast — because Phoenix stays warmer than the ground around it.

"In general the lander itself is designed to absorb as much solar radiation as it can, and to emit relatively little radiation in the infrared. So the lander deck has been much hotter than the surrounding ground surface, for instance," Taylor explained. "It's a bit like the top of a relatively warm computer, if you like."

The lander will likely stay warmer than its surroundings for awhile after Phoenix loses the energy it needs to operate, "so it'll be pretty late on when frost actually starts to form on the lander," Taylor said. So Phoenix isn't likely to get any pictures of itself coated in frost.

Right now the frost that is forming is all water ice because it is not yet cold enough at Phoenix's latitude for carbon dioxide ice to form, though it eventually will. Whether the frost will come as a thin coating or a thick sheet, like Mars' polar ice caps, isn't known.

"We're not sure how much CO2 will deposit at this latitude — most of it is on the polar cap," Taylor said.

Taylor tends to think the frost won't build up as much as at higher latitudes. "We'll see little flakes of ice, we'll see ice crystals and frost, but it won't be [like] the ice that freezes on your windscreen on a winter's morning," he said.

After Phoenix shuts down, the only way to observe the mounting frost will be through NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. Scientists aren't sure just how much HiRISE will be able to see, but the team is hoping it will be able to shed some light on Phoenix fate, since communication with the lander will be lost.

"We won't be able to talk, but we'd sure like to watch," Goldstein said.

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