[meteorite-list] Phoenix Makes First Trench in Science Preserve

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/phoenix/release.php?ArticleID=1749

Phoenix Makes First Trench in Science Preserve
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
June 17, 2008

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander began digging in an area called "Wonderland"
early Tuesday, taking its first scoop of soil from a polygonal surface
feature within the "national park" region that mission scientists have
been preserving for science.

The lander's Robotic Arm created the new test trench called "Snow White"
on June 17, the 22nd Martian day, or sol, after the Phoenix spacecraft
landed on May 25. Newly planned science activities will resume no
earlier than Sol 24 as engineers look into how the spacecraft is
handling larger than expected amounts of data.

During Tuesday's dig, the arm didn't reach the hard white material,
possibly ice, that Phoenix exposed previously in the first trench it dug
into the Martian soil.

That's just what scientists both expected and wanted. The Snow White
trench is near the center of a relatively flat hummock, or polygon,
named "Cheshire Cat," where scientists predict there will be more soil
layers or thicker soil above possible white material.

The Snow White trench is about two centimeters deep (about
three-quarters of an inch) and 30 centimeters (about a foot) long. The
Phoenix team plans at least one more day of digging deeper into the Snow
White trench.

They will study soil structure in the Snow White trench to decide at
what depths they will collect samples from a future trench planned for
the center of the polygon.

Meanwhile, the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA) instrument
continues its ongoing experiment in the first of its eight ovens.

TEGA has eight separate tiny ovens to bake and sniff the soil to look
for volatile ingredients, such as water. The baking is performed at
three different temperature ranges.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona
with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed
Martin, located in 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 818-354-6278
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