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Posted: September 26, 2008 Earlier this week Phoenix used its robotic arm to slide a rock away from an area of soil that could shed light on the processes that effect the presence of ice on Mars. Phoenix had enlarged the trench near the videotape-sized rock –- nicknamed “Headless” – two days earlier in preparation for the ground moving maneuver to slip the rock into the trench. The ground surface between the rock's prior position and the lip of the trench had a slope of about three degrees downward toward the trench. "The rock ended up exactly where we intended it to," says Matt Robinson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Although the robotic arm was not designed to heave rocks around the Phoenix workspace, the motivation was in the layer of hard, icy material discovered around the landing site. Excavating down to that hard layer underneath a rock might provide clues about processes affecting the ice. "The appeal of studying what's underneath is so strong we have to give this a try," says Michael Mellon, a Phoenix science team member at the University of Colorado. "The rocks are darker than the material around them, and they hold heat. In theory, the ice table should deflect downward under each rock. If we checked and saw this deflection, that would be evidence the ice is probably in equilibrium with the water vapour in the atmosphere." The scientists also speculate that if the icy layer were found closer to the surface under a rock, it could be that the rock is collecting moisture from the atmosphere, with the moisture becoming part of the icy layer. Whatever new findings are derived from the study of the soil underneath the rock, scientists will be given a fresh insight into the ways in which the Martian atmosphere and surface are intimately linked.
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Phoenix slipped the "Headless" rock (originally located just above the trench in the top image) into a trench earlier this week (bottom image), in order to study the soil underneath the original location of the videotape-sized rock. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University.