Blogs / 80beats

Almost two weeks after NASA’s latest robotic explorer made a picture-perfect landing on Mars, it was ready to get down to work. The Phoenix’s main mission is to scoop up samples of dirt and ice and look for evidence of whether liquid water ever existed on the planet, and whether the conditions may have ever existed to support primitive life. By Friday it had unpacked its 8-foot robotic arm and practiced scraping dirt from the polar plain, and it was geared up for its first real tests.

But when the Phoenix carried its first scoop of dirt to a tiny oven where the dirt would be analyzed, something went wrong. Photos show that the robotic arm did deposit a scoop of dirt in the proper screened opening, but sensors in the oven reported that no particles had made it through the screen and into the oven.

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Two days after a flawless touchdown on the surface of Mars, the Phoenix Lander is busily snapping pictures of itself and of the polar landscape.

It landed in an arctic plain near the north pole called Vastitas Borealis, where it is expected to discover water ice mixed in with the frozen soil. In accordance with NASA’s mandate to “follow the water,” its mission is to search for evidence that liquid water may have once flowed on Mars, and to investigate whether conditions may have ever allowed for primitive biological life.

Before the Phoenix’s landing, NASA scientists nervously pointed out that only 55 percent of all attempts to land a vehicle on the Martian surface have been successful; they also noted the spacecraft that the Phoenix most resembles, the Mars Polar Lander, crashed in 1999. However, the Phoenix made it down with only one slight hitch.

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