Succumbing to a swirling dust storm and the cold of an encroaching Martian winter, the Phoenix Mars lander fell quiet for a day, before coming back to life Thursday evening, albeit weakly.

The lander’s batteries appeared to have drained, mission managers said, with all systems, including its heaters, shut down. The mission managers had instructed the spacecraft to wake up and send word of its condition at 12:30 a.m. Thursday via the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which was passing overhead. It did not.

But the spacecraft is programmed with a so-called Lazarus mode that enables it to resuscitate itself and recharge its batteries during the day.

Once restarted, the lander conserved its energy for 17 hours, then tried to communicate for two hours with any orbiter passing overhead, repeating the cycle until it received new instructions.

The lander successfully communicated with the Mars Odyssey orbiter Thursday evening.

Read more @ NYtimes

The iPhone Dev-Team reports that they have successfully jailbroken the iPhone 2.2 firmware. According to their post:

“The second beta of firmware version 2.2 has been out for a few days. It looks like Apple still doesn’t have a fix for devices already prone to the pwnage jailbreak and unlock.

We wondered aloud if the App Store restrictions might revive the Jailbreak scene and we noted that Steve Wozniak supports the scene.

Source: iPhone Atlas