Phoenix Mars Lander’s Robotic Arm Stuck
“We believe that the material that was intended for the targeted cell is the material that adhered to the back of the scoop,” Phoenix project manager Barry Goldstein, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Ca ada Flintridge, said in a statement. “The good news here is TEGA is functioning nominally, and we will adjust our sample drop-off strategy to run this again.”
With most of the icy soil sample collected by the robotic arm of NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander getting stuck in the scoop, and not falling into its tiny oven intended to heat it for analysis, not enough material fell inside so the oven doors could not close. This was detected by the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, which stated that the screen was vibrated but not enough material had fallen inside, preventing the oven doors from closing.
Approximately 3 cubic centimeters of material was picked up by the robotic arm and lifted over the oven. The scoop was tilted while a tool motor attempted to sprinkle the sample into the oven which has a screened opening over it, about 4 inches long by 1.5 inches wide. With all of these activities occurring Friday to early Saturday, the images that were transmitted Saturday definitely showed “stuck soil” in the scoop.
Eight weeks ago, a short-circuit had occurred when a “shaking process” was used to get a previous sample into another of the Phoenix Lander’s eight small test ovens, which demonstrated concern as this new vibrating action could cause another short-circuit –which fortunately did not occur. Sunday the mission control for the lander was to have commanded for more pictures to be taken, to see if more of the “stuck soil” had fallen out of the scoop at a later date.
This last Saturday was the Phoenix Lander’s 60th martian day, a day on a $420 million dollar mission which hopes to find out in a short designated time that soil on Mars contains the chemical ingredients necessary for life. Everything but carbon has been found—such as water vapor and carbon dioxide—with carbon compounds highly necessary for most Martian search missions.
The cycle of carbon on Earth is highly complex, an interaction between its atmosphere, the hydrosphere, and the lithosphere, with its balance kept on the surface by the tectonic processes, volcanism, and biology. But on Mars, there is no active tectonic system or a significant biosphere—so far that we have found, anyway. But things change over time, as on Earth’s evolving tectonic structure and a much more sophisticated biology evolution, so an investigation is needed where or not “there is evidence for a Martian biosphere.”
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 9:46 pm and is filed under Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
