[meteorite-list] NASA'S Phoenix Lander Robotic Arm Camera Sees Possible Ice

[mckinney trammell]

so.. is the next new, bitch'n backcounty ski area and
terraine park gonna be on mars? if so, what are lift
tix prices and it is ski-in/ ski-out ot do you gotta
ride the shuttle? where will be the best apre' hang
out after the lifts close? heard the airfare's kinda
steep, and the rover is slow and can only take to
people @ time to top of backcountry bowl.  i may opt
for potillo, instead. 93F but jonesing...hmt
--- Ron Baalke <baalke at zagami.jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:

> 
>
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-090
> 
> NASA'S Phoenix Lander Robotic Arm Camera Sees
> Possible Ice
> Jet Propulsion Laboratory
> May 30, 2008
> 
> TUCSON, Ariz.-- Scientists have discovered what may
> be ice that was
> exposed when soil was blown away as NASA's Phoenix
> spacecraft landed on
> Mars last Sunday, May 25. The possible ice appears
> in an image the
> robotic arm camera took underneath the lander, near
> a footpad.
> 
> "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.
> 
> "Full confirmation of what we're seeing will come
> when we excavate and
> analyze layers in the nearby workspace," Arvidson
> said.
> 
> Testing last night of a Phoenix instrument that
> bakes and sniffs samples
> to identify ingredients identified a possible short
> circuit. This
> prompted commands for diagnostic steps to be
> developed and sent to the
> lander in the next few days. The instrument is the
> Thermal and Evolved
> Gas Analyzer. It 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. The Thursday, May
> 29, tests recorded electrical behavior consistent
> with an intermittent
> short circuit in the spectrometer portion.
> 
> "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.
> 
> "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."
> 
> The mission passed a "safe to proceed" review on
> Thursday evening,
> meeting criteria to proceed with evaluating and
> using the science
> instruments.
> 
> "We have evaluated the performance of the spacecraft
> on the surface and
> found we're ready to move forward. While we are
> still investigating
> instrument performance such as the anomaly on TEGA
> [Thermal and Evolved
> Gas Analyzer], the spacecraft's infrastructure has
> passed its tests and
> gets a clean bill of health," said David Spencer of
> NASA's Jet
> Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., deputy
> project manager for
> Phoenix.
> 
> "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."
> 
> The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith at the
> University of Arizona
> with project management at JPL 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. For more about
> Phoenix, visit:
> http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and
> http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.
> 
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Media contacts: Guy Webster 818-354-5011
> Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
> guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov
> 
> Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
> NASA Headquarters, Washington
> dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov
> 
> Sara Hammond 520-626-1974
> University of Arizona, Tucson
> shammond at lpl.arizona.edu
> 
> 2008-090
> 
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