‘Transient Event’ Stalls Phoenix Mission
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Prospecting at Mars’ north pole was set back at least a day yesterday when a communications link to NASA’s Phoenix lander, nestled into a wide, undulating expanse nicknamed Green Valley, was interrupted by what spacecraft operators called a “transient event.”
The event, caused by a cosmic ray or some other high-energy particle, knocked out the UHF radio on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, one of two spacecraft circling Mars that relays computer commands between Phoenix and Earth. The interruption occurred as operators were attempting to test the nearly 8-foot-long robotic arm that is scheduled to begin digging into the Martian plain in the next few days.
