[meteorite-list] Sample-Collection Tests by NASA's Phoenix Lander Continue

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 17:29:03 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <200807090029.RAA28600_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-127

Sample-Collection Tests by NASA's Phoenix Lander Continue
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
July 08, 2008

TUCSON, Ariz. -- NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's science and engineering
teams are testing methods to get an icy sample into the Robotic Arm
scoop for delivery to the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA).

Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, Phoenix's "dig
czar," said the hard Martian surface that Phoenix has reached proved to
be a difficult target, comparing the process to scraping a sidewalk.

"We have three tools on the scoop to help access ice and icy soil,"
Arvidson said. "We can scoop material with the backhoe using the front
titanium blade; we can scrape the surface with the tungsten carbide
secondary blade on the bottom of the scoop; and we can use a high-speed
rasp that comes out of a slot at the back of the scoop."

"We expected ice and icy soil to be very strong because of the cold
temperatures. It certainly looks like this is the case and we are
getting ready to use the rasp to generate the fine icy soil and ice
particles needed for delivery to TEGA," he said.

Scraping action produced piles of scrapings at the bottom of a trench on
Monday, but did not get the material into its scoop, information
returned from Mars on Monday night confirmed. The piles of scrapings
produced were smaller than previous piles dug by Phoenix, which made it
difficult to collect the material into the Robotic Arm scoop.

"It's like trying to pick up dust with a dustpan, but without a broom,"
said Richard Volpe, an engineer from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., on Phoenix's Robotic Arm team.

Images from the lander's Robotic Arm Camera showed that the scoop
remained empty after two sets of 50 scrapes performed earlier Monday
were collected into two piles in the trench informally named "Snow
White." These activities were a test of possible techniques for
collecting a sample of ice or ice-rich soil for analysis.

The mission teams are now focusing on use of the motorized rasp within
the Robotic Arm scoop to access the hard icy soil and ice deposits. They
are conducting tests on Phoenix's engineering model in the Payload
Interoperability Testbed in Tucson to determine the optimum ways to rasp
the hard surfaces and acquire the particulate material produced during
the rasping. The testbed work and tests on Mars will help the team
determine the best way to collect a sample of Martian ice for delivery
to TEGA.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona
with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed
Martin, 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. For more about Phoenix, visit:
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

2008-127
Received on Tue 08 Jul 2008 08:29:03 PM PDT