Phoenix Scoops Up Martian Soil
Posted on: Monday, 2 June 2008, 17:25 CDT
One week after landing on far-northern Mars, NASA Phoenix spacecraft lifted its first scoop of Martian soil as a test of the lander's Robotic Arm.
The practice scoop was emptied onto a designated dump area on the ground after the Robotic Arm Camera photographed the soil inside the scoop. The Phoenix team plans to have the arm deliver its next scoopful, later this week, to an instrument that heats and sniffs the sample to identify ingredients.
A glint of bright material appears in the scooped up soil and in the hole from which it came. "That bright material might be ice or salt. We're eager to do testing of the next three surface samples collected nearby to learn more about it," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, Phoenix co-investigator for the Robotic Arm.
The camera on the arm examined the lander's first scoop of Martian soil. "The camera has its own red, green and blue lights, and we combine separate images taken with different illumination to create color images," said the University of Arizona's Pat Woida, senior engineer on the Phoenix team.
The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith at the University of Arizona with project management by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.
Click here for more images of the scoop...
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On the Net:
For more about Phoenix, visit: http:// www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.
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User Comments (3)
| 3. |
Posted by Josef Bauer on 06/02/2008, 19:53 hello, i found human skulls in the near of Phoenix.Nobody bive mi a return comentary. I think it´s must have more atention. I am not a Ghosthunter, but what i have found is very strange and is very like this Skull of Glass and stone found on diferents places where living the Inkas,Mayas. Take a look in my side "onidigiart" in the label vida en marte you will found this about i am talking. Greets and give mi a commentary Josef Bauer |
| 2. |
Posted by Mike on 06/02/2008, 19:26 Interesting! |
| 1. |
Posted by William Milazzo - FL on 06/02/2008, 18:53 Has anyone else noticed the rock that has a small, bowl-like depression with a hole in the center? Several pictures (1150 and 1154, for example) taken on Sol 6 show this rock. Is this possibly a fossil? What other processes could shape a rock in this manner? |
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