[meteorite-list] Highest Resolution View Ever From Mars Comes From Phoenix Lander

[Ron Baalke]

FROM: Lori Stiles (520-360-0574; lstiles at u.arizona.edu)

Highest Resolution View Ever From Mars Comes From Phoenix Lander
University of Arizona
June 5, 2008

A microscope on NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander has taken images of dust and sand
particles with the greatest resolution ever returned from another planet.

The mission's Optical Microscope observed particles that had fallen onto an
exposed surface, revealing grains as small as one-tenth the diameter of a human
hair.

"We have images showing the diversity of mineralogy on Mars at a scale that is
unprecedented in planetary exploration," said Michael Hecht of NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. He is the lead scientist for Phoenix's
Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) instrument suite.

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.

Meanwhile, Phoenix received commands Thursday to collect its first soil sample
to be delivered to a laboratory instrument on the lander deck. Commands for
that same activity sent on Wednesday did not reach Phoenix because the orbiter
intended for relaying the transmission, NASA's Mars Odyssey, had put itself
into a safe standby mode shortly before the commands would have reached
Odyssey.

On Wednesday, the lander completed a back-up plan of activities that had been
sent previously, reported JPL's Chris Lewicki, mission manager for Phoenix
surface operations on the lander's 11th Martian day. That plan included weather
monitoring and additional imaging for a high-resolution color panorama of the
site.

The Optical Microscope images were taken June 3 of particles that had collected
on a sticky surface exposed during the Phoenix landing and for five days after
landing. "It's a first quick look," Hecht said. "This experiment was partly an
insurance policy for something to observe with the microscope before getting a
soil sample delivered by the arm, and partly a characterization of the Optical
Microscope. All the tools are working well."

Some of the particles might have come from inside the spacecraft during the
forceful events of landing, but many match expectations for Martian particles.
"We will be using future observations of soil samples delivered by the Robotic
Arm to confirm whether the types of particles in this dustfall sample are also
seen in samples we can be certain are Martian in origin," Hecht said.

The particles show a range of shapes and colors.

"You can see the amount of variety there is in what appears otherwise to be just
reddish brown soil," said Tom Pike, Phoenix science team member from Imperial
College London. He noted that one translucent particle resembles a grain of
salt, but that it is too early to say for sure.

Thursday's commands were relayed to Phoenix via NASA's Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter. The relay radio on that orbiter has been working well in recent days,
after intermittently turning itself off last week. Phoenix will continue to do
relays via Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter until Odyssey returns to full
functioning, and then Phoenix will use both orbiters.

"We are currently bringing the Odyssey spacecraft back into nominal operations,
and we will resume relay service with Odyssey in the next day or two," said
JPL's Chad Edwards, chief telecommunications engineer for the JPL Mars
Exploration Program.

"We think Odyssey went into safe mode because of a single event that affected
computer memory," Edwards said. "Yesterday's safe mode event appears to be very
similar to events that have caused Odyssey to go into safe mode two or three
times earlier during its long operation around Mars." Odyssey has been orbiting
Mars since 2001.

International contributions to the Phoenix Mars mission 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.

WEBLINKS:
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu
http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix

MEDIA CONTACTS:
Guy Webster, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
(818-354-5011; guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov)
Sara Hammond, University of Arizona
(520-626-1974; shammond at lpl.arizona.edu)
Dwayne Brown, NASA Headquarters, Washington
(202-358-1726; dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov)

EDITORS NOTE: The JPL Media Relations Office also issued this release.