Boy they sure had some challenges to overcome. Good luck to them !

Hmmm... Recent OM field
What would explain the appearance of a transparent fluid?

Couldn't have said it better myself!



Can't wait to read what the experts here have to say!

Imperfections in the silicone substrate? Looks like an empty pre-sample-delivery substrate to me, and quite plainly, obviously so. It's there on Sol 4, it's there on Sol 77. Why on earth would you pull a or at that?

Doug

It was?

Ok... didn't remember that. My take was that this moisture just appeared suddenly. Thanks for yanking me back to Earth.

Also, I blame Shaka. (just joking).

Here I am with the available time just to tell you guys that there will be a press release for the AFM results really soon, we may be talking about tomorrow...

I've posted at spacEurope a report from Daniel Parrat covering operations until Sol 70.

Here I go again...back to the non-web zone...this is just killing me!!! I can't even see the details about Enceladus' flyby!

I deserve the blame, not having noticed it earlier. But I must have a basic flaw in my understanding of the OM operation. I thought new substrates were rotated under the OM each time. Or is the flawed field returned to before each new sample?

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has taken the first-ever image of a single particle of Mars' ubiquitous dust, using its atomic force microscope.
Phoenix Microscope Takes First Image Of Martian Dust Particle
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=0&cID=222

The "upper right " description for the location of the particle in this image seems to be wrong. The caption to the below linked image saying the particle is in the "upper left" seems correct to me.
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?...271&cID=222

It should be upper left.

Just from a quick look at the 30-sols configuration table document (PDF) that documented the first sols of operations, involving 2 scoop samples and 1 air-delivered sample, and imaging on a variety of sols, it appears odd unused substrates get imaged at odd moments, and (groups of) substrates are not used up in physical order. From that, I'd find it hard to predict their actual scheme.

(And, I don't get the reference to "flawed". What is flawed?)

MECA Microscopy Sample Stage Configuration Sols 0-30 lightly describes the workings, and has some additional diagrams.

FYI, I found out from Tom Pike that the AFM data was actually captured on sol 69.

--Emily

Thanx for your input, 0.
The OM view I referred to: HERE
seems to show a flow of clear fluid (silicon?) over the upper part of the substrate, including a trapped bubble (air?) over on the right side.
There is no dust visible, so I guess it's some kind of 'blank' substrate periodically re-imaged (?? )

OK. One person's flaw is another's attaching of a solid silicone pad with a liquid adhesive that later hardened, when looks under a microscope didn't matter. It's a tiny object. Maybe it was hard to clamp it so that all gas was expelled. Maybe it didn't matter. It might be good enough and not flawed.

Its first imaging, according to that 30-sol document, was early and before it was used for a delivery. I'm just guessing, from other documents, that that is part of the procedure, so pre- and post-delivery images can be contrasted. The most recent image looks very similar to the initial so I would assume it still hasn't been used.

If they published the entire log of when substrates were imaged, or if someone went through the raw images and built one for us, maybe we could discern a pattern. Just conjecture: maybe they intended to deliver to it earlier and plans changed, and they are now planning again to employ it so they needed a more recent "before" image. Maybe that silicone substrate is periodically exposed to the air to see what sticks. Maybe they checked for spillover from other deliveries. I doubt they're imaging it just for fun.

I think Shaka was just using "flawed" as an identifier for the substrate disk that he initially thought might show some liquid and that Doug supposed showed "Imperfections in the silicone substrate?". I don't think he meant it as a derogatory comment.

I agree it's not derogatory. It's just confusing, for it isn't necessarily apt. I was lost. I needed to ask.

If it needs further reference, can we just call that sol-4 silicone substrate (if indeed it is one imaged at least twice) by its designation, OM24, from the table? The rotation position from an image caption (like rotation 2441) is probably adequate to look that up, too, as well as an image ID that leads to the caption (like gID 921).

This is outstanding news. Congratulations to the team for their success with the AFM. I still can hardly believe I saw an atomic force microscope image taken by a robot near the northern pole of Mars. What'll they think of next?

Bravo, Phoenix team. Encore! Encore!

So... our bubbly friend, OM24, a silicone substrate, got some more camera time recently, for instance Sol 78, Sol 81, Sol 82.

Somewhere in there it got plainly messier, so I think we won't be seeing much of it any more, after its contents have been thoroughly imaged. Recent previous activity was probably just establishing the "before".

Nearby OM23, a weak magnet, got imaged in there, too, so maybe the whole set got a delivery. But, it's too tedious calling up OM images to read captions to determine for sure.

Horton, you are great !
Several beautiful microscopic images:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hortonheardawho/2885395586/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hortonheardawho/2899516500/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hortonheardawho/2896330842/
and many, many other fantastic Horton's images at:
Hortonheardawho's photostream
Thank's Horton and Mars Forum.

Er, thanks peter59 for the kudos.

I have sort'a specialized in the Phoenix OMs, trying to squeeze out every last byte of information.

Here are the 209 OM images that I have produced to date.

Remember, the colors are useful only for inter-image comparison and must not be treated as "real".

I have tried to add image tags that may be helpful in searching the images, but there is one important set of tags and links missing: sample location. I have requested assistance in tagging the OM images from "the other forum" but no one has yet offered to help.

Does anyone know of a document that states exactly where specific OM samples were taken?

The mission summary pages on the Phoenix home site doesn't exactly tie sampling location to specific sample cells.

Mark Lemmon's SSI image website mentions the sampling locations for some, but not all, of the OM samples. It's a place to start.

If we can get a consensus on what the samples are named, where they came from, and where they ended up, I'll be delighted to add that information to my workspace map.

--Emily

I have left out this interesting AFM image (Sol 124).
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?...679&cID=322
The image on the left is a particle of Martian soil observed with the atomic force microscope on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander. For comparison, the image on the right is a type of terrestrial soil viewed with a scanning electron microscope.
The Mars image covers an area approximately 10 microns wide. This flat, smooth-surfaced particle is consistent with the appearance of soil particles from Earth containing the mineral phylloslicate, as seen in the left and right perimeter of the terrestrial image.

Wow! That is so cool to see. Thanks for posting it, peter59. I've been waiting to see another really interesting AFM image, and that comparison was awesome...really amazing to me, and it was the encore I was hoping for.

It is curious that their caption contained this phrase...

Phylloslicates are a subclass of minerals that contains the clay minerals and others that are common on Earth, like talc, serpentine, biotite, and muscovite. Phylloslicate is not a specific mineral. I would love to know if this sample looks more like a clay, as their caption seems to be suggesting. I have no experience looking at these minerals on the micron scale. Can the AFM morphology actually help distinguish among the phylloslicate minerals?

Cosmic,
I, too, was a little puzzled by the wording of the caption. I also wondered about the intent of the terrestrial comparison. Was it to compare the ragged (weathered?) edges of the terrestrial phyllosilicate with the smooth (non-weathered?) edges of Martian variety? And what is that spongy grain in the terrestrial sample?

None of these are criticisms.

I think it's pretty amazing and extremely cool that there is a working AFM on Mars.

The press-release copy, Mars Particle and Terrestrial Soil, Compared Microscopically, had slightly more words than the web viewer pop-up, but uses language unfamiliar to me -- but 'microboxwork' sounds cool.



It says "for comparison" (and not "for contrast") so I take it as: the similarity of the Martian grain to a known Earth phyllosilicate sample, is evidence that the Mars grain is also likely a phyllosilicate. The comparison focuses on the left and right perimeter of the Earth sample.

Edit: I think the other bit of evidence for the phyllosilicate interpretation came from the briefing at the end of September. Planetary News: Phoenix (2008): Phoenix Detects Falling Snow, Digs Up Evidence for Past Water, and Snares Mission Extension



During the press conference there may have been mention of that new-release AFM image, so it might be worth digging up a transcript, if it exists. The above source also has:

They need to stop using egg head lingo and write it in plain english.....lol.

Also its silly they use two different scale pictures as comparasions.

I've taken the left and right side of the Earth image and enlarged them 2+ times to approximate same scale as the Mars sample. (The Mars sample image is shown twice just to fill in some empty space.)
Click to view attachment

Here I've isolated the top left part of the Earth image and adjusted the focus and lighting to approximate those of the Mars image.
It looks to me like this section of the Earth image shows six or so stacked plates and the Mars image shows a single plate. (This is my own very inexpert observation.)
Click to view attachment

How could the AFM 'see' plates below the one it's 'riding on'?

It looks to me like the Earth sample is a stack of plates seen edge on. The Mars sample image looks to have been manipulated to give a side perspective view. I also wonder if the part I've colored violet here is part of the sample or, as it looks to me, the substrate on which the sample sits. (Again, not an expert. )
Click to view attachment
Note: nano-rover added for fun

What really causes me a wonderment is that these same two images, the electron miscroscope image of the terrestral soil and the AFM image of Martian soil, was used at a press conference back in September to show that *carbonates* were seen in Martian soil.

Is the phyllosilicate composed of carbonate minerals? Or did I hear something entirely wrong?

-the other Doug

Or is it just the 'zero deflection' baseline, below which the 'stylus' is not deflected?

Hmmm. Here is a comparison with the first AFM image of a spherical Martian dust particle. The scale is about the same based on the dust particle (circled) being one micron (one micrometer) in diameter. So the question is, does the flat area (?) correspond to sample (which I doubt), to the flat area of the substrate (A), or to the 'zero deflection baseline' (B)? I've reached the depths of my ignorance.
Click to view attachment
Note: The description in the "first AFM image" link says the dust particle is in the upper right of the image when it is in the upper left.

The carbonate detection was separate and independent from the phyllosilicate finding, and did not relate to the AFM image. The presence of calcium carbonate was inferred from (1) the WCL evidence of buffering at 8.3 ph, and (2) carbon dioxide gas evolved at high temperature in TEGA.