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Mars lander to squirrel away soil in advance of winter
21:36 05 September 2008 NewScientist.com news service Rachel Courtland
The Phoenix lander will try to stockpile soil samples as quickly as possible to
make the
most of diminishing solar power as the Martian winter approaches. But making
full use of
the lander's instruments may require an additional extension of the mission.
Less sunlight and new technical problems have prompted Phoenix team members to
revise
their strategy for the lander's TEGA (Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer)
instrument, which
cooks soil samples and looks for evidence of organic compounds as well as
minerals that
have been formed by liquid water.
The new plan is to place samples in the remaining four TEGA ovens, or cells, and
conduct
preliminary analysis by the end of September.
"The strategy is to get all the cells filled as quickly as possible," says
project manager
Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
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