Phoenix inserted the four needles of its thermal and conductivity probe into Martian soil during the 98th Martian day, or sol, of the mission and left it in place until Sol 99 (Sept. 4, 2008).
NASA MISSION UPDATE
A fork-like conductivity probe has sensed humidity rising and falling beside NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, but when stuck into the ground, its measurements so far indicate soil that is thoroughly and perplexingly dry.
“If you have water vapor in the air, every surface exposed to that air will have water molecules adhere to it that are somewhat mobile, even at temperatures well below freezing,” said Aaron Zent of NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., lead scientist for Phoenix’s thermal and electroconductivity probe.
Continue reading ‘Phoenix Finds Mars Not Unlike Humid East Coast - Only A Lot Drier’
MARS PHOENIX MISSION UPDATE
25 August 2008
The next sample of Martian soil being grabbed for analysis is coming from a trench about three times deeper than any other trench NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has dug.
On Tuesday, Aug. 26, the spacecraft will finish the 90 Martian days (or “sols”) originally planned as its primary mission and will continue into a mission extension through September, as announced by NASA in July. Phoenix landed on May 25.
“As we near what we originally expected to be the full length of the mission, we are all thrilled with how well the mission is going,” said Phoenix Project Manger Barry Goldstein of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Continue reading ‘Phoenix Digs Deeper As Third Month Nears End’
MARS PHOENIX UPDATE
14 August 2008
NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has taken the first-ever image of a single particle of Mars’ ubiquitous dust, using its atomic force microscope.
The particle — shown at higher magnification than anything ever seen from another world — is a rounded particle about one micrometer, or one millionth of a meter, across. It is a speck of the dust that cloaks Mars. Such dust particles color the Martian sky pink, feed storms that regularly envelop the planet and produce Mars’ distinctive red soil.
“This is the first picture of a clay-sized particle on Mars, and the size agrees with predictions from the colors seen in sunsets on the Red Planet,” said Phoenix co-investigator Urs Staufer of the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, who leads a Swiss consortium that made the microscope.
“Taking this image required the highest resolution microscope operated off Earth and a specially designed substrate to hold the Martian dust,” said Tom Pike, Phoenix science team member from Imperial College London. “We always knew it was going to be technically very challenging to image particles this small.”
Continue reading ‘Phoenix Microscope Takes First Image of Martian Dust Particle’
NASA MISSION UPDATE
5 August 2008
Phoenix Mars mission scientists spoke today on research in progress concerning an ongoing investigation of perchlorate salts detected in soil analyzed by the wet chemistry laboratory aboard NASA’s Phoenix Lander.
“Finding perchlorates is neither good nor bad for life, but it does make us reassess how we think about life on Mars,” said Michael Hecht of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., lead scientist for the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA), the instrument that includes the wet chemistry laboratory.
If confirmed, the result is exciting, Hecht said, “because different types of perchlorate salts have interesting properties that may bear on the way things work on Mars if — and that’s a big ‘if ‘ — the results from our two teaspoons of soil are representative of all of Mars, or at least a significant portion of the planet.”
Continue reading ‘Phoenix Lander Finds Perchlorates in Soil’
These trenches on Mars glisten with white spots of ice.
White House Briefed On Potential For Mars Life
Craig Covault
Aviation Week & Space Technology
“The White House has been alerted by NASA about plans to make an announcement soon on major new Phoenix lander discoveries concerning the ‘potential for life’ on Mars, scientists tell Aviation Week & Space Technology.
“Sources say the new data do not indicate the discovery of existing or past life on Mars. Rather the data relate to habitability–the ‘potential’ for Mars to support life–at the Phoenix arctic landing site, sources say.”
MARS PHOENIX MISSION UPDATE
31 July 2008
Laboratory tests aboard NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander have identified water in a soil sample. The lander’s robotic arm delivered the sample Wednesday to an instrument that identifies vapors produced by the heating of samples.
“We have water,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. “We’ve seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted.”
With enticing results so far and the spacecraft in good shape, NASA also announced operational funding for the mission will extend through Sept. 30. The original prime mission of three months ends in late August. The mission extension adds five weeks to the 90 days of the prime mission.
“Phoenix is healthy and the projections for solar power look good, so we want to take full advantage of having this resource in one of the most interesting locations on Mars,” said Michael Meyer, chief scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
Continue reading ‘Tastes Like Chicken Broth?’
PHOENIX MISSION UPDATE
24 July 2008
NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has groomed the bottom of a shallow trench to prepare for collecting a sample to be analyzed from a hard subsurface layer where the soil may contain frozen water.
Images received Thursday morning confirmed that the lander’s robotic arm had scraped the top of the hard layer clean during activities of Phoenix’s 58th Martian day, or sol, corresponding to overnight Wednesday to Thursday.
The Phoenix team developed commands for sending to the spacecraft Thursday to complete two remaining preparations necessary before collecting a sample and delivering it to the lander’s Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA). One part of the plan for Sol 59 (overnight Thursday to Friday) would assure that the scoop is empty of any soil collected earlier. Another would complete a final cleaning of any volatile materials from the oven that will receive the sample.
In the past two weeks, the team has refined techniques for using a powered rasp on the back of the arm’s scoop to cut and collect shavings of material from the bottom of the trench. The trench, informally named “Snow White,” is 4 to 5 centimeters deep (about 2 inches), about 23 centimeters wide (9 inches), and about 60 centimeters long (24 inches) long.
Continue reading ‘Trench on Mars Ready for Next Sampling by NASA Lander’
PHOENIX MISSION UPDATE
18 July 2008
TUCSON, Ariz. — The team operating NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander plans to tell the lander today to do a second, larger test of using a motorized rasp to produce and gather shavings of frozen ground.
The planned test is a preparation for putting a similar sample into one of Phoenix’s laboratory ovens in coming days. The instrument with the oven, the Thermal and Evolved- Gas Analyzer (TEGA), will be used to check whether the hard layer exposed in a shallow trench is indeed rich in water ice, as scientists expect, and to identify some other ingredients in the frozen soil.
The rasp flings some of the shavings that it produces directly into an opening on the back of the scoop at the end of the lander’s robotic arm. The test planned for today differs in several ways from the first test of the rasp on Mars, on July 15.
“First, we will scrape the terrain before rasping, to expose fresh terrain for sampling,” said Richard Volpe of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., an engineer for the Phoenix robotic arm team. “Second, we will rasp four times in a row, twice the amount previously. Third, the scoop blade will be run across the rasp holes to pick up as much of the tailings as possible.”
Continue reading ‘NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander Continues Tests with Rasp’
Andrei Kislyakov looks at the problems of human missions to the Red Planet in his commentary, Will we reach Mars? And what is the main obstacle to sending people to Mars? People.
“Hardly anything can prevent mankind from launching piloted flights to other planets. But alongside technicalities, it will have to resolve the problem of preserving the life and health of a man who will be the most precious and vulnerable link in a Martian or any other mission,” he writes.
Meanwhile, University of Hartford history professor Michael Robinson makes the case for robotic Mars missions over their much more expensive human counterparts.
“Space exploration is a zero-sum game. Sending astronauts to Mars (a planet now studied quite efficiently by rovers, orbiters, and, as of late May, the Phoenix Lander) requires an enormous investment that will come at the expense of smaller, more useful, scientific projects,” Robinson argues.
Arizona’s East Valley Tribune says that based on initial Phoenix soil analysis, Mars would be a perfect to grow turnips, asparagus and green beans. Well, aside from the “violent extremes of temperature, lack of liquid water and the lethal ultraviolet radiation,” of course.
In both images of this before-and-after sequence, a sample of Martian soil rests on a screen over the opening to one of the eight ovens of the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer instrument (TEGA) on NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Max Planck Institute
NASA MISSION UPDATE
Engineers operating the Robotic Arm on NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander are testing a revised method for delivering soil samples to laboratory instruments on Phoenix’s deck now that researchers appreciate how clumpy the soil is at the landing site.
“We’re a little surprised at how much this material is clumping together when we dig into it,” said Doug Ming a Phoenix science team member from NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston.
The soil’s physical properties are proving to be a challenge for getting a sample intended for one instrument to pass through a screen over a delivery opening. The instrument is the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Anaylzer, or TEGA, designed to bake and sniff samples to identify some key ingredients. The analyzer vibrated the screen for 20 minutes on Sunday but detected only a few particles getting through the screen, not enough to fill the tiny oven below.
Continue reading ‘NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander Tests Sprinkle Technique’
