[meteorite-list] Phoenix Scrapes 'Almost Perfect' Icy Soil for Analysis

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 5 Jul 2008 20:55:36 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <200807060355.UAA02789_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/phoenix/release.php?ArticleID=1771

Phoenix Scrapes 'Almost Perfect' Icy Soil for Analysis
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
July 01, 2008

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander enlarged the "Snow White" trench and scraped
up little piles of icy soil on Saturday, June 28, the 33rd Martian day,
or sol, of the mission. Scientists say that the scrapings are ideal for
the lander's analytical instruments.

The robotic arm on Phoenix used the blade on its scoop to make 50
scrapes in the icy layer buried under subsurface soil. The robotic arm
then heaped the scrapings into a few 10- to 20-cubic centimeter piles,
or piles each containing between two and four teaspoonfuls. Scraping
created a grid about two millimeters deep.

The scientists saw the scrapings in Surface Stereo Imager images on
Sunday, June 29, agreed they had "almost perfect samples of the
interface of ice and soil," and commanded the robotic arm to pick up
some scrapings for instrument analysis.

The scoop will sprinkle the fairly fine-grained material first onto the
Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA). The instrument has tiny ovens
to bake and sniff the soil to assess its volatile ingredients, such as
water. It can determine the melting point of ice.

Phoenix's overall goals are to: dig to water frozen under subsurface
soil, touch, examine, vaporize and sniff the soil and ice to discover
the history of water on Mars, determine if the Martian arctic soil could
support life, and study Martian weather from a polar perspective.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona
with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed
Martin, located in Denver. International contributions come from the
Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the
universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute,
Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. More about the
Phoenix Mars Lander is online at http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.

Media contacts:
Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov

Sara Hammond 520-626-1974
University of Arizona, Tucson
shammond at lpl.arizona.edu
Received on Sat 05 Jul 2008 11:55:36 PM PDT