Washington - After days of problems attempting to sample the
Martian soil, NASA's Phoenix lander has filled one of its 'ovens'
with dirt and will now bake and analyze its contents, scientists said
Wednesday.
'We have an oven full,' University of Arizona scientist Bill
Boynton said. 'It took 10 seconds to fill the oven. The ground
moved.'
The advance comes after several days of frustration when the
lander's robot arm on Friday collected dirt but its particles proved
too large to filter into the tiny ovens designed to sample its
contents.
The 420-million-dollar Phoenix mission is sampling the soil in a
hunt for evidence of ice or water that could have once supported life
on Mars.
Phoenix shook the dirt to get it through a filter designed to keep
large chunks of soil from clogging the oven, but the move at first
appeared not to have worked.
Scientists were surprised that a final attempt got the dirt into
the oven, and Boynton said the cumulative effect of all the
shaking may have helped or that the dirt itself may have changed
slightly after sitting on the screen for several days.
They hope analysis will tell why the soil proved so clumpy.
The craft landed last month after a 10-month, 680-million-
kilometre journey. The first evidence of water on Mars was found by
the Odyssey orbiter in 2002, and NASA wanted to send a rover to the
northern area of the planet, where it believes there are heavier
concentrations of ice ground.
USA
Your Talkback on this Story