Tasting ice
Phoenix Mars Lander ready to analyze ice if instruments work properly
Phoenix Mars Lander’s robotic arm has successfully drilled into the concrete-hard Martian soil in a trench informally known as Snow White.
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Using a pinky-sized rasp, the arm loosened material that was then collected with the lander’s scoop. The NASA craft’s team is testing the rasp’s ice-drilling ability in order to prepare samples for possible analysis by Phoenix’s Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA.
“The team is totally focused on getting a rasped-up icy sample to TEGA,” says mission specialist Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis. “We went to Mars to follow the water, and until TEGA tastes it, there will always be a doubt in some people’s minds that the planet has water ice.”