NASA Scientists to try and 'Shake' up the Phoenix mission

NASA’s Phoenix lander scooped up a sample of the red Martian soil and dumped it into the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, like it was required to, last Sunday. But, in a frustrating twist of fate the coveted red soil turned out to be far more cohesive than expected and could hence not even pass through the miniscule opening of the miniature oven! Outwitted and perturbed the NASA scientists devoted to the Phoenix mission have now finally come up with a way to get the lumpy red soil to get in. A good strong ‘shake’, they say, ought to do the job.

That the soil would not be able to enter the oven due to its density had not been a point of consideration, confessed officers dedicated to the oven experiment. "To be honest, we never thought it would be working so well that we'd have to worry about a riches of just too much," grinned William Boynton, head of the oven experiment initiative "Now that we see the nature of that soil ... we really are much better off with very small amounts of soil."

If the seemingly domestic solution of shaking the soil to help it enter the oven does not seem to work scientists will use the 8-foot long lander arm as a pestle to pulverize the soil lumps and convert it to fine dust. Once crushed, scientists are sure, the soil will be able to enter the oven easily.

The Phoenix lander landed on Mars on 25th May. Since then it has been getting itself into one technical glitch after the other. Twice it lost connection with the Earth center and was forced to fall back on reserve commands saved on its internal system to keep itself from sitting idle.

Scientists admit that the present crisis is however the toughest challenge the Phoenix has faced yet.

The primary job of the Phoenix is to search for possible traces of life supporting elements on the face of the red planet. The lander is not equipped to detect living things or fossils on its own. For the purpose it depends on the aforementioned Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer oven, which will bake the soil and then literally ‘sniff’ it to see if the vapors emitted has traces of life sustaining components.