This image taken by the Optical Microscope on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander
on Sol 17 (June 11, 2008) shows soil sprinkled from the lander's Robot Arm
scoop onto a substrate that has been micromachined to produce different
patterns of pegs and holes to capture the smallest particles in the
Martian soil.
The micromachined substrates are designed to tightly hold particles for
imaging using the Atomic Force Microscope on Phoenix, which should be able
to zoom in another 40 times beyond the magnification in this Optical
Microscope image. Each stripe has a different spacing of pegs and holes.
The strip third from the left, with a peg spacing of 5 micrometers, has
been most successful in collecting the particles. These substrates were
fabricated by Imperial College London as the United Kingdom hardware
contribution to the Phoenix mission.
For scale, each strip is 0.4 millimeter (0.016 inch) 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.