A rock informally named "Headless," on the north side of NASA's Phoenix
Mars Lander, has been selected for an attempt to slide the rock aside with
the lander's robotic arm.
Moving rocks is not among the many tasks the arm was designed to do, but
if the maneuver can be accomplished, scientists on the Phoenix team hope
to check whether the depth to a subsurface ice layer is any different
underneath the area where the rock now sits.
Headless is about 19 centimeters (7 inches) long, 10 centimeters (4
inches) wide, extends 2 to 3 centimetes (about 1 inch) above the surface.
This image, originally posted on Aug. 27, 2008 without the label on
Headless, is a mosaic of images taken by the Surface Stereo Imager on
Phoenix, showing the workspace reachable with the robotic arm. The camera
took the images during the early afternoon of the mission's 90th Martian
day, corresponding to overnight Aug. 25 to Aug. 26.
The shadow of the the camera itself, atop its mast, is just left of the
center of the image and roughly a third of a meter (one foot) wide.
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.
