A Mars Odyssey

“We are awash in chemistry data,” said Michael Hecht of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, lead scientist for the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA, instrument on Phoenix. “We’re trying to understand what is the chemistry of wet soil on Mars, what’s dissolved in it, how acidic or alkaline it is. With the results we received from Phoenix yesterday, we could begin to tell what aspects of the soil might support life.”

The Snow White trench is still being enlarged by the NASA Phoenix Mars Lander, with little piles of ice soil scraped up by the Robotic Arm. Meanwhile, mission scientists are feeling that the scrapings are perfect for analytical instruments, considered about 80% complete on its first, two-day wet chemistry experiment with three more cells to use on the remaining mission.

About 50 scrapes have been made so far, with Phoenix’s arm heaping the results in 10-to-20 cubic centimeter piles—or about two and four teaspoonfuls each—forming a grid about 2 millimeters deep. June 29th gave the scientists their first viewing of the scraping, agreeing with the results being “almost perfect samples of the interface of ice and soil.” At this point, the scoop sprinkled the material into the TEGA for baking and determining the melting point of ice.

Looking at the Phoenix mission with an overall perspective, the lander’s goals are multi-fold:

• Dig to frozen water under the subsurface soil
• Soil needs to be touched, examined, vaporized and sniffed
• Once this is done, the history of Martian water can verified
• Can the Martian arctic soil support life?
• Need to study Martian weather from a polar perspective.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 9:04 pm and is filed under Space Agency News, Uncategorized. 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.