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NASA's Phoenix Finally Fills Oven
JoeRobe writes "Phoenix has successfully filled oven #4 of the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer instrument (TEGA). They have spent several days now vibrating the screen above the oven, trying to get a significant amount of soil sample into it. From the article: '[T]he oven might have filled because of the cumulative effects of all the vibrating, or because of changes in the soil's cohesiveness as it sat for days on the top of the screen.' Either way, this is the first step toward getting some interesting data from this instrument."
The actual oven is only about 1 mm in diameter. The screen covers a funnel that directs a small sample of soil into the oven. What happens when you let a 2 mm particle fall on a 1 mm oven? That's right...it cover the opening and nothing else gets in.
Believe it or not, there are people at NASA and JPL capable of seeing the big picture.
In this case, the soil turned out to be clumpier than anyone expected, and before you ask, yes they did try to determine what it would be like before launch, using data from the Vikings and the rovers.