Phoenix to Bake Ice-Rich Soil Next Week
Scientists will carefully select and deliver the sample because it could be the last one baked.
The next sample delivered to NASAâs Phoenix Mars Landerâs Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA, will be ice-rich.
A team of engineers and scientists assembled to assess TEGA after a short circuit was discovered in the instrument has concluded that another short circuit could occur when the oven is used again.
âSince there is no way to assess the probability of another short circuit occurring, we are taking the most conservative approach and treating the next sample to TEGA as possibly our last,â said Peter Smith, Phoenixâs principal investigator.
A sample taken from the trench informally named âSnow Whiteâ that was in Phoenixâs robotic armâs scoop earlier this week likely has dried out, so the soil particles are to be delivered to the landerâs optical microscope on Thursday, and if material remains in the scoop, the rest will be deposited in the Wet Chemistry Laboratory, possibly early on Sunday.
The mission teams will mark the Independence Day holiday with a planned âstand downâ from Thursday morning, July 3, to Saturday evening, July 5. A skeleton crew at The University of Arizona in Tucson, at NASAâs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, Colo., will continue to monitor the spacecraft and its instruments over the holiday period.
âThe stand down is a chance for our team to rest, but Phoenix wonât get a holiday,â Smith said. The spacecraft will be operating from pre-programmed science commands, taking atmospheric readings and panoramas and other images.
Once the sample is delivered to the chemistry experiment, Smith said the highest priority will be obtaining the ice-rich sample and delivering it to TEGAâs oven number zero.
In a few days, the Phoenix team will conduct tests so the instruments can deliver the icy sample quickly, so no materials sublimate, or change from a solid to a vapor, during the delivery process.
The short circuit was believed to have been caused when TEGAâs oven number four was vibrated repeatedly over the course of several days to break up clumpy soil delivered to oven number 4. Delivery to any TEGA oven involves a vibration action, and turning on the vibrator in any oven will cause oven number 4 to vibrate as well.
The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith at the UA 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.
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Sara Hammond
University of Arizona
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Guy Webster
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J.D. Harrington
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