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If you didn’t already know, the Mars Phoenix mission came to a close yesterday.  You may remember the Mars Phoenix as the robot that found water on Mars over the summer.  When the Phoenix outlived the original estimates, those in charge pushed it a little further until it finally stopped communicating with Earth yesterday.  Normally this might make an interesting story about the fact that it died, but would really only depress those that were involved.

This time was a bit different, though.  The Mars Phoenix was giving updates through its time through Twitter.  Through Twitter the Phoenix told us how its mission was going, when he went into safe mode, instances when its solar panels were blocked by a sandstorm, and even answered questions that other users posed.

The Twitter messages have been quite depressing in the past few weeks.  Everyone knew the mission was going to end soon, but nobody was positive when that would be.  It doesn’t help that for some reason I pictured Phoenix as something resembling Wall•E, making it even sadder when he was talking about dying.  Though it was depressing, I love that fact that the Phoenix was using Twitter, even adding in some jokes at times (my favorite being this one from Talk Like A Pirate Day).  I’m sure I’m not the only one that would normally have a passing interest in the Phoenix and its journey.  Using Twitter made it easier to follow, and made us feel closer to the project than we normally could.

Read Farewell Tweet [Twitter]