Farewell old friend, you served us well
Damn. My hopes for inter-spacecraft photography seem to have been dashed. According to Mars Daily things didn't turn out as planned, and "preliminary analysis of the images did not show any definitive sightings of a spacecraft". Double damn. On the up side, NASA have said "efforts to regain contact with the spacecraft and determine what has happened to it will continue" but "realistically, we have run through the most likely possibilities for re-establishing communication, and we are facing the likelihood that the amazing flow of scientific observations from Mars Global Surveyor is over". Triple damn.
MGS was a great spacecraft, and it served much longer that originally planned, and yielded far more scientific data than was ever hoped for. The list of achievements is quite significant, including the production of an unprecedented global topographic map of Mars. NASA have put together a slideshow of the mission highlights which you can see from their MGS mission page.
MGS was a great spacecraft, and it served much longer that originally planned, and yielded far more scientific data than was ever hoped for. The list of achievements is quite significant, including the production of an unprecedented global topographic map of Mars. NASA have put together a slideshow of the mission highlights which you can see from their MGS mission page.