Just a real brief entry tonight, and a nice little change of pace from my political ramblings. The Phoenix Lander, which landed on Mars in May and has yielded a wealth of scientific information about the Red Planet, has died due to prolonged lack of sunlight.
Phoenix gathered the first concrete evidence of water on Mars, but had been (intentionally) landed near the Martian poles where sunlight is scarce (but water is, apparently, abundant). After several months of successful operation, the probe finally fell victim to the Martian winter and has stopped communicating with earth.
Some of the scientific data gathered by Phoenix is still being processed, and there may be more groundbreaking discoveries yet to be announced, but the probe itself will likely never be heard from again.