In both images of this before-and-after sequence, a sample of Martian soil
rests on a screen over the opening to one of the eight ovens of the
Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer instrument (TEGA) on NASA's Phoenix Mars
Lander. Between the times at which the lander's Robotic Arm Camera took
these images during the mission's 14th Martian day after landing (June 8,
2008), TEGA vibrated the screen for about seven minutes.
The TEGA oven doors are on a surface sloping at about 45 degrees, with the
top of the doors near the lower edge of these images. The downhill
direction on this part of the instrument appears upwards in the image. The
screen-covered opening for the oven intended to analyze this soil sample
is between the vertically positioned door at the right end of the series
of doors and the partially opened door to the left of that one. The screen
is covered with soil in this pair of images, but visible in a view from
about the same angle taken before the soil was delivered, at PIA10769. For
scale, the doors are about 10 centimeters (4 inches) long.
The "before" image here is the one in which the circular feature near the
top of the image is more brightly lit. In the image taken after about
seven minutes of shaking, the soil resting on the screen has slumped
almost imperceptibly downhill. A dark gap about 3 millimeters (one-tenth
of an inch) wide opened at the top edge of the screen.
The Phoenix Mission is led by the University of Arizona, Tucson, on behalf
of NASA. Project management of the mission is by NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Spacecraft development is by Lockheed Martin
Space Systems, Denver.
