[meteorite-list] NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander Uses Soil Probe and Swiss Scope

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:28:48 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <200807110128.SAA13743_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-130

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander Uses Soil Probe and Swiss Scope
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
July 10, 2008

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has touched Martian soil with a fork-like
probe for the first time and begun using a microscope that examines
shapes of tiny particles by touching them.

Phoenix's robotic arm pushed the fork-like probe's four spikes into
undisturbed soil Tuesday as a validation test of the insertion
procedure. The prongs of this thermal and electrical conductivity probe
are about 1.5 centimeters, or half an inch, long. The science team will
use the probe tool to assess how easily heat and electricity move
through the soil from one spike to another. Such measurements can
provide information about frozen or unfrozen water in the soil.

The probe sits on a "knuckle" of the 2.35-meter-long (7.7-foot-long)
robotic arm. Held up in the air, it has provided assessments of water
vapor in the atmosphere several times since Phoenix's May 25 landing on
far-northern Mars. Researchers anticipate getting the probe's first soil
measurements following a second placement into the ground, planned as
part of today's Phoenix activities on Mars.

Phoenix also has returned the first image from its atomic force
microscope. This Swiss-made microscope builds an image of the surface of
a particle by sensing it with a sharp tip at the end of a spring, all
microfabricated from a sliver of silicon. The sensor rides up and down
following the contour of the surface, providing information about the
target's shape.

"The same day we first touched a target with the thermal and electrical
conductivity probe, we first touched another target with a needle about
three orders of magnitude smaller -- one of the tips of our atomic force
microscope," said Michael Hecht of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., lead scientist for the suite of instruments on Phoenix
that includes both the conductivity probe and the microscopy station.

The atomic force microscope can provide details of soil-particle shapes
as small as about 100 nanometers, less than one-hundredth the width of a
human hair. This is about 20 times smaller than what can be resolved
with Phoenix's optical microscope, which has provided much
higher-magnification imaging than anything seen on Mars previously.

The first touch of an atomic force microscope tip to a substrate on the
microscopy station's sample-presentation wheel served as a validation
test. The substrate will be used to hold soil particles in place for
inspection by the microscope. The microscope's first imaging began
Wednesday and produced a calibration image of a grooved substrate. "It's
just amazing when you think that the entire area in this image fits on
an eyelash. I'm looking forward to exciting things to come," Hecht said.

With these developments in the past two days, the spacecraft has put to
use all the capabilities of its Microscopy, Electrochemistry and
Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA, suite of instruments. Researchers have
begun analyzing data this week from the second sample of soil tested by
MECA's wet chemistry laboratory.

Meanwhile, the Phoenix team is checking for the best method to gather a
sample of Martian ice to analyze using the lander's Thermal and
Evolved-Gas Analyzer, which heats samples and identifies vapors from
them. Researchers are using Phoenix's robotic arm to clear off a patch
of hard material uncovered in a shallow trench informally called "Snow
White." They plan in coming days to begin using a motorized rasp on the
back of the arm's scoop to loosen bits of the hard material, which is
expected to be rich in frozen water.

The atomic force microscope for Phoenix was provided by a consortium led
by the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland.

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; 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

2008-130
Received on Thu 10 Jul 2008 09:28:48 PM PDT