[meteorite-list] NASA's Phoenix Scoops Up Martian Soil

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=release=2008-091a

NASA's Phoenix Scoops Up Martian Soil
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
June 02, 2008

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. 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