NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is clinging to life and communicating daily with mission controllers although its power supply is quickly diminishing.

Phoenix has communicated with mission scientists everyday since Oct. 30, when the spacecraft suddenly went quiet after a drop in available power sent it into an inactive "safe mode."

The spacecraft is now in its sixth month on the Martian surface — double the time span of its initial mission — since landing on the Red Planet's arctic plains on May 25.

Phoenix has been scooping up samples of Martian dirt and the rock-hard, subsurface layer of water ice at its landing site and analyzing them for signs of past potential habitability.

Phoenix is nearing the end of its mission as the fraction of the day the sun spends above the horizon shrinks at its arctic landing site.