Farewell, Phoenix
Posted by Qrystal on November 10, 2008 at 21:59.
Category: Miscellany. Tags: astronomy, nostalgia, science.
Phoenix Mars Lander sent its farewell transmission from Mars today:
01010100 01110010 01101001 01110101 01101101 01110000 01101000 <3
(Translation: Triumph and Love.)
After that, the only messages in the tweetstream were ones labelled as coming from Phoenix mission ops, explaining that “Phoenix is no longer communicating with Earth.” Poor little droid! R.I.P.
I’m actually teary-eyed now… although I guess I knew it was coming. It was sad to hear @MarsPhoenix twittering about its inevitable loss of communication, but it didn’t feel final until today when the binary message was tweeted. Triumph indeed, distant friend!
There was a longer blog entry to fill out the details, and it included the beautiful photo shown above.