Más sobre Phoenix (en inglés)

Parece que van quedando pocas oportunidades de confirmar
analíticamente el agua marciana ...

"Phoenix to Bake Ice-Rich Sample Next Week
07.02.08  This image shows the trench informally called "Snow White
5," which is Phoenix's current active digging area.

A team of engineers and scientists assembled to assess TEGA after a
short circuit was discovered in the instrument has concluded that
another short circuit could occur when the oven is used again.

"Since there is no way to assess the probability of another short
circuit occurring, we are taking the most conservative approach and
treating the next sample to TEGA as possibly our last," said Peter
Smith, Phoenix's principal investigator.

A sample taken from the trench informally named "Snow White" that was
in Phoenix's robotic arm's scoop earlier this week likely has dried
out, so the soil particles are to be delivered to the lander's optical
microscope on Thursday, and if material remains in the scoop, the rest
will be deposited in the Wet Chemistry Laboratory, possibly early on
Sunday.

The mission teams will mark the Independence Day holiday with a
planned "stand down" from Thursday morning, July 3, to Saturday
evening, July 5. A skeleton crew at the University of Arizona in
Tucson, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and
Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, Colo., will continue to
monitor the spacecraft and its instruments over the holiday period.

"The stand down is a chance for our team to rest, but Phoenix won't
get a holiday," Smith said. The spacecraft will be operating from pre-
programmed science commands, taking atmospheric readings and panoramas
and other images.

Once the sample is delivered to the chemistry experiment, Smith said
the highest priority will be obtaining the ice-rich sample and
delivering it to TEGA's oven number zero.

In a few days the Phoenix team will conduct tests so the instruments
can deliver the icy sample quickly, so no materials sublimate, or
change from a solid to a vapor, during the delivery process.

The short circuit was believed to have been caused when TEGA's oven
number four was vibrated repeatedly over the course of several days to
break up clumpy soil delivered to oven number 4. Delivery to any TEGA
oven involves a vibration action, and turning on the vibrator in any
oven will cause oven number 4 to vibrate as well. "


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