Phoenix collects sample of Martian Soil, NASA eagerly awaits analyses

NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, which touched down on the surface of the red planet on May 2, made the first dig with its robotic arm and collected a sample of the Martian soil. The scoop of soil shows signs of an inexplicable white substance – which could be ice or salt. The affirmation will be made once the soil is analyzed in the instrument called the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA.

The soil was dug out from a spot called the Baby Bear next to the lander. The analysis may take somewhere between few days and a whole week, said Peter Smith, Phoenix principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

The sample collected was the top 2 to 4 centimeters (0.8 to 1.6 inches) of surface material at the site.

It was important to collect the right amount of soil, so as to ensure that some of it would fall into the pencil lead-sized opening to the oven, without dropping onto other parts of the instrument.

“We're ecstatic that we got a third to a quarter of a scoopful, roughly the size of a cup. We couldn't be happier,” said robotic arm flight software lead Matt Robinson of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US.

TEGA is an interesting instrument which provides two types of information. It is fitted with a tool, called a differential scanning calorimeter, which monitors how much power is required to increase the temperature of the sample at a constant rate.

It helps determine the temperature of transition points from solid to liquid to gas for ingredients in the sample. The gases that are released by this heating then go to a mass spectrometer, a tool that can identify the chemicals and measure their composition.

The mass spectrometer will determine whether any organic compounds are present in the sample. If it detects any, it would further scrutinize the sample to identify the types and amounts of compounds.

Organic compounds have carbon, often combined with hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen. These are vital for living entities.

A picture of the soil scoop beamed back at earth shows the familiar reddish-brown dirt, which has whitish streaks in an inch-size clump. Some scientists think that it could be ice but most of them believe it's a salt of some kind.

NASA scientists are confident that Phoenix has landed in the right place as pictures of the lumpy landscape around the lander show ridges bordered by trenches that are characteristic of permafrost regions at Earth's poles.