Phoenix Microscope Takes First Image of Martian Dust Particle

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

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: 2008-158 August 14, 2008

Phoenix Microscope Takes First Image of Martian Dust Particle

TUCSON, Ariz. – NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has taken the first-ever image of a single particle
of Mars' ubiquitous dust, using its atomic force microscope.

The particle -- shown at higher magnification than anything ever seen from another world -- is a
rounded particle about one micrometer, or one millionth of a meter, across. It is a speck of the
dust that cloaks Mars. Such dust particles color the Martian sky pink, feed storms that regularly
envelop the planet and produce Mars' distinctive red soil.

"This is the first picture of a clay-sized particle on Mars, and the size agrees with predictions from
the colors seen in sunsets on the Red Planet," said Phoenix co-investigator Urs Staufer of the
University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, who leads a Swiss consortium that made the microscope.

"Taking this image required the highest resolution microscope operated off Earth and a specially
designed substrate to hold the Martian dust," said Tom Pike, Phoenix science team member from
Imperial College London. "We always knew it was going to be technically very challenging to
image particles this small."

It took a very long time, roughly a dozen years, to develop the device that is operating in a polar
region on a planet now about 350 million kilometers or 220 million miles away.

The atomic force microscope maps the shape of particles in three dimensions by scanning them
with a sharp tip at the end of a spring. During the scan, invisibly fine particles are held by a series
of pits etched into a substrate microfabricated from a silicon wafer. Pike's group at Imperial
College produced these silicon microdiscs.

The atomic force microscope can detail the shapes of particles as small as about 100
nanometers, about one one-thousandth the width of a human hair. That is about 100 times
greater magnification than seen with Phoenix's optical microscope, which made its first images of
Martian soil about two months ago. Until now, Phoenix's optical microscope held the record for
producing the most highly magnified images to come from another planet.

"I'm delighted that this microscope is producing images that will help us understand Mars at the
highest detail ever," Staufer said. "This is proof of the microscope's potential. We are now ready
to start doing scientific experiments that will add a new dimension to measurements being made
by other Phoenix lander instruments."

"After this first success, we're now working on building up a portrait gallery of the dust on Mars,"
Pike added.

Mars' ultra-fine dust is the medium that actively links gases in the Martian atmosphere to
processes in Martian soil, so it is critically important to understanding Mars' environment, the
researchers said.

The particle seen in the atomic force microscope image was part of a sample scooped by the
robotic arm from the "Snow White" trench and delivered to Phoenix's microscope station in early
July. The microscope station includes the optical microscope, the atomic force microscope and
the sample delivery wheel. It is part of a suite of tools called Phoenix's Microscopy,
Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith from the University of Arizona with project
management at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and development
partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian
Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus in
Denmark; the Max Planck Institute in Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. The
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

The latest Phoenix images and information are at http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu .

-end-

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