Soil Studies Continue at Phoenix Mars Lander Site
Phoenix's robotic arm delivered soil Thursday from the Rosy Red trench through a narrow opening to a screen above the No. 5 oven on the lander's TEGA. A few particles of the sample passed through the screen on Thursday, but not enough to fill the oven and allow analysis of the sample to begin.
The Phoenix team sent commands for TEGA to vibrate the screen again on Friday, and more material reached the oven, though still not enough to proceed with analysis.
“There appear to be clumps blocking the opening,” Doug Ming of NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, the Phoenix team's science lead, said on Friday.
“However, we have seen in the past that when this soil sits for a while, it disperses. We intend to fill an oven with this material, either by additional vibration of the same screen or by opening doors to one of the other TEGA cells.”
Friday activities by the spacecraft included extending the width of an exploratory trench informally named “Neverland,” which extends between two rocks on the surface of the ground.
The lander last week also made overnight measurements of conductivity in the Martian soil. The conductivity measurements completed Wednesday, Aug. 6, ran from the afternoon of Phoenix's 70th Martian day, or sol, after landing to the morning of Sol 71. A fork-like probe inserted into the soil checks how well heat and electricity move through the soil from one prong to another.
The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith from The University of Arizona with project management at JPL, and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, located in Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus in Denmark; the Max Planck Institute in Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Sara Hammond
University of Arizona
520-626-4402
shammond@lpl.arizona.edu
Veronica McGregor/Guy Webster
NASA Jet Propulsion Lab
818-354-5011
veronica.mcgregor@jpl.nasa. gov
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov
Dwayne Brown
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov
Media Contact
All latest news from the category: Physics and Astronomy
This area deals with the fundamental laws and building blocks of nature and how they interact, the properties and the behavior of matter, and research into space and time and their structures.
innovations-report provides in-depth reports and articles on subjects such as astrophysics, laser technologies, nuclear, quantum, particle and solid-state physics, nanotechnologies, planetary research and findings (Mars, Venus) and developments related to the Hubble Telescope.
Newest articles
“Nanostitches” enable lighter and tougher composite materials
In research that may lead to next-generation airplanes and spacecraft, MIT engineers used carbon nanotubes to prevent cracking in multilayered composites. To save on fuel and reduce aircraft emissions, engineers…
Trash to treasure
Researchers turn metal waste into catalyst for hydrogen. Scientists have found a way to transform metal waste into a highly efficient catalyst to make hydrogen from water, a discovery that…
Real-time detection of infectious disease viruses
… by searching for molecular fingerprinting. A research team consisting of Professor Kyoung-Duck Park and Taeyoung Moon and Huitae Joo, PhD candidates, from the Department of Physics at Pohang University…
