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Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov
Sara Hammond 520-626-1974
University of Arizona, Tucson
shammond@lpl.arizona.edu
NEWS RELEASE: 2008-109 June 13, 2008
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander Inspects Delivered Soil Samples
TUCSON, Ariz. -- New observations from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander provide the most
magnified view ever seen of Martian soil, showing particles clumping together even at the smallest
visible scale.
In the past two days, two instruments on the lander deck -- a microscope and a bake-and-sniff
analyzer -- have begun inspecting soil samples delivered by the scoop on Phoenix's Robotic Arm.
"This is the first time since the Viking missions three decades ago that a sample is being studied
inside an instrument on Mars," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of
Arizona, Tucson.
Stickiness of the soil at the Phoenix site has presented challenges for delivering samples, but also
presents scientific opportunities. "Understanding the soil is a major goal of this mission and the soil is
a bit different than we expected," Smith said. "There could be real discoveries to come as we analyze
this soil with our various instruments. We have just the right instruments for the job."
Images from Phoenix's Optical Microscope show nearly 1,000 separate soil particles, down to sizes
smaller than one-tenth the diameter of a human hair. At least four distinct minerals are seen.
"It's been more than 11 years since we had the idea to send a microscope to Mars and I'm absolutely
gobsmacked that we're now looking at the soil of Mars at a resolution that has never been seen
before," said Tom Pike of Imperial College London. He is a Phoenix co-investigator working on the
lander's Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer.
The sample includes some larger, black, glassy particles as well as smaller reddish ones. "We may be
looking at a history of the soil," said Pike. "It appears that original particles of volcanic glass have
weathered down to smaller particles with higher concentration of iron."
The fine particles in the soil sample closely resemble particles of airborne dust examined earlier by
the microscope.
Atmospheric dust at the Phoenix site has remained about the same day-to-day so far, said Phoenix co-
investigator and atmospheric scientist Nilton Renno of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
"We've seen no major dust clouds at the landing site during the mission so far," Renno said. "That's
not a surprise because we landed when dust activity is at a minimum. But we expect to see big dust
storms at the end of the mission. Some of us will be very excited to see some of those dust storms
reach the lander."
Studying dust on Mars helps scientists understand atmospheric dust on Earth, which is important
because dust is a significant factor in global climate change.
"We've learned there is well-mixed dust in the Martian atmosphere, much more mixed than on Earth,
and that's a surprise," Renno said. Rather than particles settling into dust layers, strong turbulence
mixes them uniformly from the surface to a few kilometers above the surface.
Scientists spoke at a news briefing today at the University of Arizona, where new color views of the
spacecraft's surroundings were shown.
"We are taking a high-quality, 360-degree look at all of Mars that we can see from our landing site in
color and stereo," said Mark Lemmon, Surface Stereo Imager lead from Texas A&M University,
College Station.
"These images are important to provide the context of where the lander is on the surface. The
panorama also allows us to look beyond our workspace to see how the polygon structures connect
with the rest of the area. We can identify interesting things beyond our reach and then use the
camera's filters to investigate their properties from afar."
The Phoenix mission is led by Smith at the University of Arizona with project management at JPL
and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the
Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen
and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For
more about Phoenix, visit:
and
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.
-end-
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