NASA's Phoenix Lander Delivers Soil-chemistry SampleJuly 7, 2008 -- NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander used its Robotic Arm to deliver a second sample of soil for analysis by the spacecraft's wet chemistry laboratory, data received from Phoenix on Sunday night confirmed. Results from testing this sample will be compared in coming days to the results from the first Martian soil analyzed by the wet chemistry laboratory two weeks ago. That laboratory is part of Phoenix's Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer. The main activity on the lander's schedule for today is testing a method for scraping up a sample of icy material and getting it into the scoop at the end of the Robotic Arm. Photography before, during and after the process will allow evaluation of this method. If the test goes well, the science team plans to use this method for gathering the next sample to be delivered to Phoenix's bake-and-sniff instrument, the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer. Click Here for images associated with this press release.  |
THE MISSIONThe University of Arizona is honored to be the first public university to lead a mission to Mars. The Phoenix Mars Mission, scheduled to land May 25, 2008, is the first in NASA's "Scout Program." Scouts are designed to be highly innovative and relatively low-cost complements to major missions being planned as part of the agency's Mars Exploration Program. Learn More |
The Phoenix Mission is led by Principal Investigator Peter H. Smith of The University of Arizona, supported by a science team of CO-Is, with project management at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and development partnership with Lockheed Martin Space Systems. International contributions are provided by the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus Denmark; the Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. Additional information on Phoenix is online at here and here. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Additional information on NASA's Mars program is online at here.
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