080729 Sticky situation for Phoenix

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Sticky situation for Phoenix
BY DR EMILY BALDWIN
ASTRONOMY NOW

Posted: July 29, 2008

After two failed attempts to deliver a sample of icy soil to Phoenix’s TEGA oven over the weekend, it’s back to the drawing board to figure out a way to get this surprisingly sticky soil out of the robotic scoop.

The stubborn Martian soil remains stuck in Phoenix's robotic arm scoop. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Max Planck Institute.

"It has really been a science experiment just learning how to interact with the icy soil on Mars, how it reacts with the scoop, its stickiness, whether it's better to have it in the shade or the sunlight," says Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona.

The team tried two methods over the weekend to pick up and deliver a sample of icy soil to one of Phoenix’s laboratory ovens, but in both cases most of the sample stuck firmly inside the lander's inverted scoop. In the second attempt, Phoenix was instructed to leave the scoop upside down for longer and to vibrate it for longer, and although images showed a small amount of soil reached the open oven doors, not enough was received to initiate analysis of the soil’s composition.

False colour image of the oven doors after the failed soil delivery attempts this weekend. The soil appears as a red-brown colour and it can be seen that hardly any soil has reached the far, open, oven for analysis and that some of soil is lying at the bottom of the adjacent doors. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University.

The samples are believed to contain water ice mixed in with the soil so it is with much eagerness that the Phoenix team are continuing to test out different delivery techniques while the lander continues with other planned studies of the soil and the atmosphere.

"While we continue with determining the best way to get an icy sample, we intend to proceed with analysing dry samples that we already know how to deliver,” says Smith.