Mars Lander Prepares for Second Ice Sample Posted on July 23rd
NASA
scientists planned to instruct the Phoenix Mars Lander to test out its method
for shaving and collecting ice for a second time Friday.
The test is
in preparation for collecting a similar sample of ice to be analyzed in one of Phoenix’s
instruments in the coming days.
The ice
scrapings will be placed into one of the tiny ovens in the lander’s Thermal and
Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA), which heats up samples of Martian dirt and
analyzes the vapors they give off. Mission team members hope that the TEGA
analysis of the ice samples will show that they are rich in water ice, as some
scientists expect.
Water is
the key to life as we know it, and the lander, which touched down May 25, is
designed to probe its location in the Martian arctic for conditions that might
be hospitable to microbes. The 90-day mission is not designed to detect life.
The first
test of the collecting method was conducted on July 15. The rasp on the end
of the lander’s scoop was used to scrape away some ice into the scoop. The test
planned for Friday will be a little different.
“First,
we will scrape the terrain before rasping, to expose fresh terrain for
sampling,” said Richard Volpe of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif., an engineer for the Phoenix robotic arm team. “Second, we will rasp
four times in a row, twice the amount previously. Third, the scoop blade will be
run across the rasp holes to pick up as much of the tailings as possible.”
The
scrapings are being taken from a 2-inch (5-centimeter) deep trench informally
known as Snow
White.
The sample
for the TEGA instrument will also be taken from this trench. Mission
controllers hope to collect and deliver the sample quickly and early in the
Martian morning to minimize the amount of ice lost to sublimation.