Since there will be a press briefing today at 11 am PDT / 1800 UT it seems like a good time to start a fresh Phoenix thread. Phoenix hasn't gotten that icy sample yet but they do seem to have overcome their concerns about using TEGA so it looks likely we'll see a lot more sample acquisitions and deliveries in the coming weeks.

Press briefing will be on NASA TV: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv on both public and media channels. Here's that higher-bitrate stream on Yahoo: http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/nasa/index.html

--Emily

To take the question of the rate of circulation -- the water "cycle" on Mars (if indeed a cycle it be), and tie it to the ice sample -- the D:H ratio of the sample could give us a lot of evidence. If this topmost layer of ice has a different D:H than the atmosphere, then it's been here for a long time. Not to make too much of one tiny measurement, but it really is a huge issue:

-- Maybe there is a cycle, but only where the ice is even closer to the surface than it is at the Phoenix site.

-- Maybe there is a cycle, but the summertime ice level is some tiny epsilon below the winter ice level, and it's that seasonal epsilon that cycles. If so, a summer measurement of the very topmost ice might show a difference from atmospheric D:H that belies the truth. (With CO2 overlying the H2O in winter, the seasons become very complex with regard to the surface of that H2O layer.)

-- Given any possible cycle, the question of how much and how often becomes a "verbose" one.

Am I getting too excited over this... because I could see follow-up missions to measure the D:H at a variety of depths and latitudes. It's eminently doable. Is it making too much over too little? It seems to me that the whole martian water cycle is what would be characterized in that way. Moreover, you could play "Twenty Questions" cleverly and end the game by finding negative evidence in the most favorable spot. (Exposed polar H2O ice right before or right after the CO2 covers it.)

Can D:H be determined in water ice with any reliability spectroscopically from orbit? That could be the magic measurement. Maybe the data is already in hand?!

They got the OK for an extension to Sol 124!

Doug

Did you catch the calendar date on that? I missed it.

--Emily

Bill Boynton says: TEGA got ice!!!

--Emily

Ice sample! Wow!

John,

look at the speed with which the "Snow Queen" feature has sublimed, once it was exposed. We're looking at a moderately to highly dynamic system here. Of course things are slower when they are buried by a few cm of insulating dirt, but over timescales of a few thousand years, these ice deposits are VERY active. let alone millions of years. D:H ratios don't change very fast...

The hat was hilarious ! :-)

How did we miss that lidar image?!

Who was that young lady? She has a great public persona. She makes a fantastic spokesperson, they should send her on tour when this is all over.

Did anyone catch where the tega sample that had some ice (a few percent or less, Boynton said) was collected? Was it a new soil sample or old rasp shavings?

Here's a link to the graphics for today's press conference.
http://jpl.nasa.gov/news/phoenix/images.php

EDIT: Boynton said the sample was "a quick scraping of the soil above the ice layer" so I assume that means Wicked Witch came from the Snow White trench, a newly scraped sample.

--Emily

Hmmm... Craig Covault was very cryptic there wasn't he? Almost like he was suggesting he knew they'd found Something Interesting but weren't telling... Conspiracy theorists are going to LOVE that...

I know - it's quite obvious now, looking at the Raw's

http://www.met.tamu.edu/mars/i/SS061EFF901...8_16AA3RBM1.jpg

(Sigh...) And here I was playing elsewhere & completely forgot about this. (Worked all last night, just got home an hour or two ago). Any other juicy tidbits?

I heard "end of the year."

So maybe the message to families of Phoenix team members is "I'll be home for Christmas."

That's right around the equinox, with the sun barely getting above 20 degrees elevation, max.

Totally agree--delightful presentation.

I heard end of fiscal year which would be September 30. Not much of an extension. It must take more paperwork to extend into a new fiscal year.

The last question was one of the best: Boynton answered that they don't have enough water in the tega sample to get the isotope ratios, unfortunately. They'll need a higher proportion of ice to soil to do that.

But this does put the last nail in the coffin of any attempts to attribute the Dodo/Goldilocks observations to anything but water ice.

Yeah - it's end of fiscal year, Sol 124. For approx $2m. That puts it almost bang on an order of magnitude better value per sol.

Doug

That, and an approved budget, which never happens on time. I'm certain that they're pressing for supplementary funding to be included in the inevitable continuing resolution until the budget gets passed. Normally, it shouldn't be a problem.

On the TEGA front, after the second ice-rich sample stuck to the scoop ("the last thing we were expecting") they decided to go for a dry sample & were delighted to find out that, surprise, there was indeed some ice in the sample anyway. "Champagne corks were popping all around"--I assume metaphorical, but who knows what the work environment is there. The amount of ice is small (~1%) but it almost definitely is ice because they saw it melting at 0 degrees. They also saw the H2O signature in the mass spec. So this goes beyond the first dry(ish) sample where they saw trace quantities of water, but only coming off the minerals at high temps. Boynton didn't say whether they would get isotope ratios from the data. I note that yesterday Boynton wasn't slated to be on the panel--maybe an indication of late-breaking developments--i.e., some good TEGA news.

There was a lot of presentation about the meteorological results. The animation showing the LIDAR beam at midnight looked like it showed wispy clouds or something drifting by--not sure.

There was a little bit of the feeling of listening to Pravda--one would think this is the most successful mission ever. More like--yippee, the IRS has granted an extension on our filing date! Never was heard a discouraging word. When one reporter mentioned the troubles TEGA has had in collecting an ice sample, Boynton got a little testy, saying that since they just got one, what's the problem?

More tidbits (in no particular order):

• Mark Lemmon (who I think was called "Mike" ) mentioned the completion of the 'Mission Success Pan,' as well as the beginning of a higher resolution pan called 'Happily Ever After.' An example of some of the intriguing surface details the SSI has photographed are the surprisingly un-wind-sculpted rocks all over the landing site.
• The atomic force microscope will be used "soon."
• The second WCL sample was remarkably similar to the first one. Perhaps this has something to do with their proximity to Heimdall?
• One of the remaining TEGA ovens will be reserved as a "blank" (maybe this was already well-known, but it's a detail I'd forgotten). In the meantime, the next sample will be another "dry" sample as the sticky ice problem is worked.
• The TEGA short circuit is now gone. I still don't understand this... is it one short? Two shorts? What happened to restore their faith that the remaining six ovens are safe to use? I wish they'd clear that up better. But... the important thing is that it's working!
• (I think the truth is closer to this.... )
• Lessee... There was a nice weather presentation that is summed up in this graphic.
• Two new trenches will be dug, called "Cupboard" and "Neverland." [Image]

Hopefully the briefing was recorded and will appear on this site soon.

As already noted by fredk, in responce to the last question of the day, he said there was not enough ice in the sample to get isotope data. They still need an ice rich sample for that. I was waiting for that question and glad it just got in under the wire, but disappointed by the answer. Still, it's something to look forward to.

I always have a hard time finding the links to the animations for these press conferences. Here it is:
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/videos_sol66.php

There were some neat ones today.

--Emily

Voila

I wondered the same thing. and that link really clarifies everything !

What amazes me about this (apart from the fact no one here spotted the beam first!) is that the beam is visible in broad daylight! (Those images were mid-afternoon.) I would've thought maybe at night...

Edit: the images were near 3am, but of course the sun is up all night now.

Light does not backscatter well from air, and Martian air is extremely thin, so we must be seeing backscattering from the dust. Martian air tends to be much dustier than earth's, and I doubt the beam would be visible in normal daylight conditions on earth.

This reminds me - anyone recall hearing a tau measurement for Phoenix?

edit - not only did no one notice the images, but apparently we all missed Lemmon's caption:

Sol 67 image of the new 'Cupboard' trench, next to Dodo-Goldilocks:

http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_17400.jpg

Actually

SSI Image of LIDAR beam..


10 commanded, but 0 received. The ones we've now seen were from a different sol

Doug

The caption I quoted from the sol 60 page has ActID 16AA. You can find those 16AA pics (all ten) on the sol 61 page.

My guess is that that sequence was planned together with the main sol 60 images, so is described on the sol 60 page, but the images are shown on the sol 61 page, since, well, they were taken on sol 61! But of course there's a certain member out there who can verify this...

I haven't seen the lidar beam in any of the other green filter lidar-search frames returned so far, which is interesting actually. Could it be we saw the beam in the first succesful sequence because dust levels were unusually high?

The sol 60 16AA and sol 61 16AA are indeed the same. There are a few unfortunate issues with the archiving, that are just not a high priority for fixing. One is that the plans are reported per planning sol, typically 0500 to 0500 LMST or thereabouts, while the data are reported by true sol (0000 - 2400 LTST). Another is that multiple plans can confuse things (a runout looks like ghost activities on sol 67 and others). And occasionally something really messes up the counts (like the joint sol 40/41 plan). None of these are unsolvable, they are just a pain for now.

There was early discussion of having tau on the weather graphic--but saying tau was 0.4 or 0.9 or whatever early on, or that it had settled to 0.3 or 035 lately ... that just wouldn't mean much to most people.

"That's some nice trenchin' you dun there Billy bob. Yep, sure is some nice trenchin'".
Click to view attachment

Some new pictures on my gallery page...

Aesthetically, "Neverland" is surely the prettiest trench so far. The one to show in textbooks about Phoenix...

"Snow White" might not be very pretty (what an ungallant thing to say! ) but she looks great in the evening light...

Click to view attachment
On the Phoenix website, the max temperature for Sol-61 said it reached 32 degrees F . This has got to be some sort of a mistake.

At least, this is consitent with ° C


Edit : the web site has been corrected with correct T°

Couple of new anaglyphs on my gallery site if anyone would like a look... wonderful depth to these ones...

Yes I did have a look Stu, and they're good. Now if I could only strain just a little bit more and peek around those rocks............

A couple more anaglyphs generated from sol 70 images...

"Neverland" is coming on nicely, too...

Click to view attachment

I don't think anyone's mentioned that more of the bright ice has been uncovered in the cupboard dig.

I hope we get to see the whole workspace cleared of topsoil eventually!

Beauty stuff, Stu!

I'm still fascinated by the cohesiveness of the soil here. Everywhere else we've dug on Mars by whatever means leaves loose, crumbly sides.

Phoenix seems to be making perchlorate castles and messing about like a kid on a beach...!

Click to view attachment

Kid digging on a beach?!
How about writing in the snow!
Is it just me or did the PHX team use the rasp to very cleverly write ' ICE! ' in the Snow White trench.
Click to view attachment

EDIT: I didn't think that anyone would take either Stu or I as being serious about this .
Just for fun folks. Maybe we'll move it to the 'It's Just Humour!' thread.

What?!?! Surely not... surely a highly professional, dedicated team of cutting edge planetary scientists, in charge of a mega-million dollar mission, with the eyes of the world watching them 24 and a bit hours a sol wouldn't do that? Why, that would be...

BERILLIANT!!! If that's not just a strange trick of shadow and light then what an absolutely glorious, childish, we-did-it-just-because-we-can-he-he thing to do! Love it!

Colourised version here...

I doubt that was on purpose, but pretty funny nevertheless

Yeah, you're right... they "accidentally" spelled out the word "ICE" and put an exclamation mark on the end... I can see how that might happen...

In this crop of an image posted by CosmicRocker, it looks like a straightforward four by four rasp pattern. So, no frivolity. (Not by humans at least.) Any "ICE!" inscription was created by the scoop scraping over the rasp holes.
Click to view attachment
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=121753