Category: Mars

Phoenix “vibrates” to move soil through a screen.

New motto for the Phoenix spacecraft: If at first you don’t succeed, then dust yourself off and try again. Since the Martian soil is proving to be a challenge for the Mars lander, engineers will try a new technique to try delivering the frozen arctic soil into the TEGA, or the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Anaylzer, designed to bake and sniff samples to identify key ingredients in the soil. The soil is clumping together, and won’t pass through a screen that brings it to the ovens on board the spacecraft. Engineers operating the Robotic Arm on Phoenix Lander are testing a revised method they are calling the sprinkle technique.

“We’re a little surprised at how much this material is clumping together when we dig into it,” said Doug Ming a Phoenix science team member from NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston.

Engineers commanded the spacecraft to vibrate the screen for 20 minutes on Sunday but detected only a few particles getting through the screen, not enough to fill the tiny oven below.

“We are going to try vibrating it one more time, and if that doesn’t work, it is likely we will use our new, revised delivery method on another thermal analyzer cell,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the instrument.

The arm delivered the first sample to TEGA on Friday by turning the scoop over to release its contents. The revised delivery method, which Phoenix is testing for the first time today, will hold the scoop at an angle above the delivery target and sprinkle out a small amount of the sample by vibrating the scoop. The vibration comes from running a motorized rasp on the bottom of the scoop.

Phoenix used the arm Sunday to collect a soil sample for the spacecraft’s Optical Microscope, so look for images of that procedure soon. Today’s plans include a practice of the sprinkle technique, using a small amount of soil from the sample collected Sunday. If that goes well, the Phoenix team assembled at the University of Arizona plans to sprinkle material from the same scoopful onto the microscope later this week.

The Phoenix team also discussed this picture, showing a spring on the ground near a footpad of the spacecraft. It came from Phoenix itself, when the biobarrier was opened to free the robotic arm back on May 30, the sixth Martian day of the mission.

Phoenix News

“To see a world in a grain of sand…” – English Poet William Blake

The Phoenix science team tested out the lander’s Optical Microscope by imaging grains of sand and dust particles, some as small as one-tenth the diameter of a human hair. These are the highest resolution image ever of small soil particles from another planet. “We have images showing the diversity of mineralogy on Mars at a scale that is unprecedented in planetary exploration,” said Michael Hecht of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The microscope observed particles that had fallen onto an exposed surface of the lander. “It’s a first quick look,” Hecht said. “This experiment was partly an insurance policy for something to observe with the microscope before getting a soil sample delivered by the arm, and partly a characterization of the Optical Microscope. All the tools are working well.”

However, some of the particles may be “alien” – that is, they might have come from inside the spacecraft when Phoenix dropped to Mars surface at landing. But at first glance, many of these grains match expectations for Martian particles. “We will be using future observations of soil samples delivered by the Robotic Arm to confirm whether the types of particles in this dustfall sample are also seen in samples we can be certain are Martian in origin,” Hecht said.

The particles show a range of shapes and colors.

“You can see the amount of variety there is in what appears otherwise to be just reddish brown soil,” said Tom Pike, Phoenix science team member from Imperial College London. He noted that one translucent particle resembles a grain of salt, but that it is too early to say for sure.

Meanwhile, Phoenix received commands Thursday to collect its first soil sample to be delivered to its science lab instrument on the lander deck. Those commands were originally sent on Wednesday, but the lander didn’t receive them as the relay for the commands, the Mars Odyssey, had gone into safe mode. The orbiter may have been hit by a cosmic ray, and engineers from JPL say nominal operations of the spacecraft should return by the end of the week. This type of event has occurred a couple of times in the Odyssey mission, and engineers don’t appear overly concerned about the situation.

So, the commands were successfully re-sent via the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Look for the first science results from Phoenix within the next day or so.

Original News Source: Phoenix news release

NASA’s Mars Odyssey has been switched into “safe-mode” after possibly being hit by energetic particles from the Sun, or by cosmic rays. Acting as one of two relay satellites between Earth and Phoenix, this has hindered commands to be sent to the lander, thereby slowing its progress. Phoenix is just about to start scence digging operations on the surface (Martian regolith is shown in the Phoenix test-run scoop of material, pictured). It seems likely that Odyssey will remain in the protective safe-mode until the weekend whilst operators try to understand what caused the problem. For the time being, the second relay satellite NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) will try to take up the slack and keep the lander in contact with mission control…

This is the second communications error in the otherwise flawless Phoenix Mars mission. The first occurred two days after touch down when the MRO switched its UHF radio into standby mode. Yesterday’s (Wednesday’s) error with another Mars-orbiting satellite, Odyssey, probably won’t be repaired until Saturday. Mission engineers believe the error may have occurred when energetic space particles interrupted Odyssey’s onboard memory. As a safety precaution, the onboard hardware was switched into a low-energy state to protect it from any damage. This event doesn’t seem to be serious, but it does slow down the progress of Phoenix which is currently excavating Mars material from the surface of the red planet, trying to understand the composition of permafrost layers.

Although frustrating, this setback will not cause too many problems to Phoenix, daily commands can still be sent to the MRO and relayed to Phoenix and the first delayed science excavation run is scheduled for today. Test runs over the past few days have revealed a white substance in the fist-sized samples of regolith, so scientists are very excited to “bake” the permafrost material to see if water ice or salt deposits are present. After the preliminary tests, mission scientists believe that Phoenix’s 8-foot robotic arm is up to the task and appears to be functioning excellently.

The following steps will be carried out in the first science run scheduled to start today:

1. Right of the test-dig area, scientists have identified three “science rich” zones. Phoenix will dig into areas known playfully as “Baby Bear”, “Mama Bear” and “Papa Bear”, after the “Goldilocks” fairy tale. Presumably they are looking for a dig that will be “just right”.
2. The first dig will cut 3/10 of an inch into the permafrost at the location of “Baby Bear”, and scoop up the material.
3. With the material safely in the scoop, Phoenix will swing its arm 90 degrees towards the onboard miniature oven. It will then wait for further commands.
4. Assuming the MRO delivers the commands from mission control, Phoenix will be instructed to drop the sample into the oven so it can be baked. Instruments will be used to look deep into the vapour given off to look for signs of carbon or hydrogen-containing organic compounds. It is at this point that the lander will evaluate the samples to see whether there is in fact current water ice on the surface.

Over the next few days samples from all the Goldilocks sites will be analysed. These are exciting times, let’s hope there are no further communications problems…

Source: Associated Press (printed at Physorg.com)

Phoenix’s first dig in the Martian soil. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ University of Arizona

The Phoenix lander used its robotic arm scoop to dig up soil on Mars surface for the first time during its activities during its seventh day on the Red Planet. The image above shows the hole dug by Phoenix, and below is a picture of the scoop itself, with the Martian soil inside.

The plan was to do a test dig and then dump the soil. If that works correctly, then Phoenix will dig another scoop and bring it to the TEGA device on board the lander, the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer, a “furnace” and mass spectrometer instrument that scientists will use to analyze Martian ice and soil samples.

During its previous day’s activities on Sol 6, Phoenix reached out and touched Mars with its robotic arm scoop to make an impression on the Martian surface. And please, no conspiracy theories here, but the impression looks like a footprint, and the Phoenix scientists have dubbed the mark “Yeti.” Touching the surface was a preliminary test for the robotic arm and scoop, to make sure everything was working correctly before making the first scoop.

However, the TEGA device has experienced an intermittent short circuit, and the TEGA scientists are developing a procedure to work around the problem. But Phoenix can still deliver the soil sample to TEGA, and the sample can be held there until the device is working.

Original News Source: Phoenix

Take a look at this image sent back from the Phoenix lander. On Friday, Phoenix scientist Ray Arvidson said there may be ice directly under the Phoenix lander, exposed in the blast zone by the retrorockets used for Phoenix’s soft landing. Friday’s image showed a small portion of the exposed area that looks brighter and smoother than the surrounding soil. On Saturday, Sol 5 for Phoenix on Mars, a new image shows a greater portion of the area under the lander. Scientists say the abundance of excavated smooth and level surfaces adds evidence to a hypothesis that the underlying material is an ice table covered by a thin blanket of soil. This is just what the Phoenix mission was hoping to find, and how incredible to land directly over your goal.

The bright-looking surface material in the center, where the image is partly overexposed, may not be inherently brighter than the foreground material in shadow. But the scientists are calling this area “Holy Cow.” Reportedly (via Emily at the Planetary Society) that’s exactly the phrase exclaimed when this image was returned. More pictures of this feature will be imaged using different exposures in an effort to determine if this really is ice.

The other interesting aspect of this image is that the retrorocket nozzles are visible right at the top of the image.

We’ll keep you posted when there’s more information and data available on the area under the lander.

Sources: Phoenix, Planetary Blog

Scientists from the Phoenix mission say the lander may have exposed ice just beneath Mars surface when soil was blown away as the spacecraft landed last Sunday, May 25. The possible ice appears in an image the robotic arm camera took underneath the lander, near a footpad. The robotic arm was moved so the camera could peer beneath the lander to make sure Phoenix’s footing is secure before any digging operations start. In the top center of the image above is the area in question.

“We could very well be seeing rock, or we could be seeing exposed ice in the retrorocket blast zone,” said Ray Arvidson of Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., co-investigator for the robotic arm. “We’ll test the two ideas by getting more data, including color data, from the robotic arm camera. We think that if the hard features are ice, they will become brighter because atmospheric water vapor will collect as new frost on the ice.”

Arvidson said in today’s Phoenix press conference that Phoenix will provide full confirmation of what lies below the lander when it excavates and analyzes layers in the nearby landscape.

One bad piece of news for the nearly flawless mission, however. The Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) instrument that “bakes and sniffs” samples to identify the chemical make-up of the soil might have a short circuit. In a test conducted on Thursday, the instrument exhibited electrical behavior consistent with an intermittent short circuit in the spectrometer portion. The team is currently developing diagnostic steps that will be sent to the lander in the next few days. TEGA includes a calorimeter that tracks how much heat is needed to melt or vaporize substances in a sample, plus a mass spectrometer to examine vapors driven off by the heat.

“We have developed a strategy to gain a better understanding of this behavior, and we have identified workarounds for some of the possibilities,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, lead scientist for the instrument.

The latest data from the Canadian Space Agency’s weather station shows another sunny day at the Phoenix landing site with temperatures holding at minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit) as the sol’s high, and a low of minus 80 degrees Celsius (minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit). The LIDAR instrument was activated for a 15-minute period just before noon local Mars time, and showed increasing dust in the atmosphere.

If you’d like to download this Phoenix weather widget for your desktop, check HERE.

“This is the first time LIDAR technology has been used on the surface of another planet,” said the meteorological station’s chief engineer, Mike Daly, from MDA in Brampton, Canada. “The team is elated that we are getting such interesting data about the dust dynamics in the atmosphere.” HERE is an animation of the LIDAR

The mission passed a “safe to proceed” review on Thursday evening, meeting criteria to proceed with evaluating and using the science instruments.

“We’re still in the process of checking out our instruments,” Phoenix project scientist Leslie Tamppari of JPL said. “The process is designed to be very flexible, to respond to discoveries and issues that come up every day. We’re in the process of taking images and getting color information that will help us understand soil properties. This will help us understand where best to first touch the soil and then where and how best to dig.”

And finally, here’s the latest version of Phoenix’s panorama, compiled of images from Phoenix’s Stereo Surface Imager (SSI) camera that were taken on sols 1 and 3. The top portion has been stretched eight fold to show details of features in the background. Phoenix’s parachute, backshell, heatshield, and impact site can also be seen.