Phoenix Update...

Phoenix – the little lander that could – is working away on the surface of Mars. A few days ago it scooped up some Martian dirt and tried to deliver it to one of the instruments on board, but ran into an unexpected problem: the dirt was very “clumpy” and refused to enter the pencil-lead sized container for the instrument's sample. The soil just sat on top of a screen intended to keep large particles out of the instrument.

The photo at right (click to enlarge) shows the clumpy dirt in the scoop. It looks to me almost like damp soil, though in the thin and dry Martian atmosphere this can't be the real explanation. The project scientists are trying to figure out what the actual source of the clumpiness is. The photo shows a test of a different way of delivering the dirt to the instrument: they tried vibrating the scoop (using a motorized rasp that's attached to the back of it) to see if that would help the soil more gracefully exit the scoop. Looks like this worked.

Meanwhile, the initial sample of soil delivered a few days ago decided to drop through the screen and into the intrument, to the delight of the project science team. They're not sure exactly why this happened – it could be all the vibrating that they've been doing, or it could be simply that the soil's characteristics changed after a few days in the sun. Whatever the reason, the team now has a sample in the instrument, and they have begun analyzing it. This is one of the key experiments on the lander, so I'm sure there are big sighs of relief being heard right about now...

The photo at right shows the two trenches that Phoenix has dug so far: “Dodo” on the left, and “Baby Bear” on the right (click to enlarge). Both trenches show whitish areas that are likely either ice or salts of some kind – with any luck at all, the sample currently being analyzed will give us a clue which it is.

So far the Phoenix lander has had zero technology problems – a very impressive achievement for NASA. For about the same price as delivering a pizza to the International Space Station...