All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there. – 2010
The Phoenix Mars Lander team hopes to start excavating the red planet soon. On Sunday, it scooped up and then dumped a handful of soil in a region dubbed the “Knave of Hearts”. The scoop contained white specks that could be ice or salt.
For the second practice “dig and dump”, engineers told the robot to go slightly deeper in the same region and use the camera on its arm to take photos.
But it ran into a communications glitch, reports the BBC.
The Odyssey satellite orbiting Mars unexpectedly went into “safe mode” and failed to send the instructions. This is the second time a communications problem has delayed the lander’s schedule. The first glitch occurred two days after it touched down, when another satellite, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, turned off its radio.
UPDATE: NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander successfully scooped up a sample of Martian soil with its robotic arm on Friday. It is now getting ready to sniff the Martian soil for signs of life-friendly elements. Once the lander drops the sample into the oven to bake up to 1,800 degrees it will take several days for scientists to complete an analysis.
About 30 engineers and programmers at NASA are tasked with writing and testing 1,000 to 1,500 lines of software code, then beaming it to the Mars Lander, 170 million miles away — every day. Engineers are working to fix the problem with Odyssey, which will remain offline until Saturday. A preliminary investigation revealed the safe mode was probably triggered by high-energy particles from space interrupting the satellite’s computer memory.
With the Odyssey Orbiter temporarily out of service, engineers told the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to mediate between the lander and Earth.
It’s the first time a scoop has touched Mars since Viking was there in the ’70s. And it’s also the first time a vehicle has gone to the polar region of Mars. Phoenix had planned to dig the first of three shallow pits north of where it landed this week. It would then shovel the soil into a tiny oven to be baked. The resulting gases would be analyzed by a variety of scientific instruments.
Additional Dailywireless articles include; The Ultimate Scoop and Mars Landing Sunday.
