Re:Th Impact Probes . . (Score 1)

What's disturbing to me about this development is that even if the main landers high gain has it's own problems, the 2 impact probes act completely independent of the main lander, and should be able to relay there signals home.

What are the odds of both the main lander, and the impact probes having communications problems at the same time? Very slim. This leads me to believe that perhaps there was a problem during decent.

Well, the impact probes landing/crashing into the surface is entirely passive, so we don't know which direction they are pointing. The probe's radio antenna has some polarization issues, and unless they landed very near perpendicular they wouldn't be heard by the MGS on the first pass. As such, there really is no reason to assume they are dead yet.