It has this Lazarus mode that will bring it back to life if it dies. That wasn’t really intended for a year from now, when Martian spring comes back. It was meant for the end of the mission, what we’re going through right now. Phoenix is quite literally dying every day now, and coming back to life because of this Lazarus mode which will kick it back on. It wakes up every day now, it doesn’t know where it is, it doesn’t know what time it is…
It has a sequence that it goes through, and when it detects that its landing pad’s feet are down, it realizes it’s on Mars and it starts acting like it’s supposed to act on Mars. It’s doing this now day after day, and the mission, at this point, is just trying to get any kind of science they can out of it. They’re instructing it to take a picture, take a temperature reading, as soon as it wakes up, so we can get some information.
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