NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

  1. Content with the tag: “soil

  2. Phoenix Scrapes 'Almost Perfect' Icy Soil For Analysis


    NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander enlarged the “Snow White” trench and scraped up little piles of icy soil on Saturday, June 28, the 33rd Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Scientists say that the scrapings are ideal for the lander’s analytical instruments.

    The robotic arm on Phoenix used the blade on its scoop to make 50 scrapes in the icy layer buried under subsurface soil. The robotic arm then heaped the scrapings into a...

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  3. Phoenix Shake and Bake


    In this interview, William Boynton talks about the TEGA instrument on the Phoenix Lander, and explains what it can tell us about the possibility for life on Mars.

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  4. NASA Phoenix Lander Bakes Sample, Arm Digs Deeper


    One of the ovens on NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander continued baking its first sample of Martian soil over the weekend, while the Robotic Arm dug deeper into the soil to learn more about white material first revealed on June 3.

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  5. NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander Inspects Delivered Soil Samples


    New observations from NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander provide the most magnified view ever seen of Martian soil, showing particles clumping together even at the smallest visible scale.

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  6. NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander Delivers Soil Sample To Microscope


    NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander sprinkled a spoonful of Martian soil Wednesday onto the sample wheel of the spacecraft’s robotic microscope station, images received early Thursday confirmed.

    “It looks like a light dusting and that’s just what we wanted. The Robotic Arm team did a great job,” said Michael Hecht of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. He is the lead scientist for the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) instrument on Phoenix.

    The delivery of scooped-up soil...

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  7. NASA's Phoenix Lander Has an Oven Full of Martian Soil


    NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has filled its first oven with Martian soil.

    “We have an oven full,” Phoenix co-investigator Bill Boynton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said today. “It took 10 seconds to fill the oven. The ground moved.”

    Boynton leads the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer instrument, or TEGA, for Phoenix. The instrument has eight separate tiny ovens to bake and sniff the soil to assess its volatile ingredients, such as water.

    The lander’s Robotic Arm delivered a partial scoopful...

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  8. Sprinkle to Taste



    Phoenix was unable to chew on the clumpy martian soil, so the team operating the Lander plans to sprinkle the soil instead. The spoonful of soil will fall onto a wheel, which will then rotate the sample so the Lander’s eagle eye — the Optical Microscope — can see it.

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