....and has failed to be resurrected in a burst of flames.  The Phoenix Mars Lander landed on Mars on the 25th May 2008 and lost contact with Earth on the 2nd November 2008. Ever since then the folks at NASA have tried to contact the lander in the slim hope that it had survived two Martian winters with mean temperatures somewhere in the frigid -100 region (something it was never designed to do) but recent satellite imagery has shown the Phoenix Lander in bits so it has now officially been declared dead.

Talking of the cold killing things, it has long been muted that people could be kept in suspended animation for indefinite periods by being chilled. The only problem with this hypothesis was the unfortunate habit of people dying once their core body temperature deviated by only a few degrees off the normal 37ºC for any appreciable length of time.

However, two people have survived being frozen for significant lengths of time with no apparent side-effects. One toddler decided to go walkabout in the midst of a Canadian winter with only a nappy for protection. She was found 2 hours later with a core body temperature of just 16 ºC and no heart-beat but was successfully resuscitated. More amazingly was a Japanese man who fell asleep on a mountain above the snow line. When found 23 days later he had a core body temperature of just 22 ºC but was again resuscitated successfully.

Researchers have now managed to determine why these people survived when most others would die and it appears oxygen depletion is the key. By studying various yeasts and worms that are often frozen then re-animated during their life-cycle they have found that starving the organisms of oxygen before being frozen puts the creature into a state of suspended animation rather than the more inconvenient state of being dead. If their research can be applied to more complex organisms such as people then the technique could be used to save people with severe injuries or illnesses by placing them in a suspended state until the problems are fixed.

However, the folks at NASA can already say that the technique of oxygen depletion and freezing doesn’t work well with machines.