Phoenix Mars Lander To Begin Rasping Ice Shavings

Rob writes with an excerpt from an article at spacefellowship.com: "A powered rasp on the back of the robotic arm scoop of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is being tested for the first time on Mars in gathering sample shavings of ice. The lander has used its arm in recent days to clear away loose soil from a subsurface layer of hard-frozen material and create a large enough area to use the motorized rasp in a trench informally named 'Snow White.' The Phoenix team prepared commands early Tuesday for beginning a series of tests with the rasp later in the day. Engineers and scientists designed the tests to lead up to, in coming days, delivering a sample of icy soil into one of the lander's laboratory ovens. 'While Phoenix was in development, we added the rasp to the robotic arm design specifically to grind into very hard surface ice,' said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 'This is the exactly the situation we find we are facing on Mars, so we believe we have the right tool for the job. Honeybee Robotics in New York City did a heroic job of designing and delivering the rasp on a very short schedule.'" I still can't get enough of pictures of a little hunk of metal on Mars.

Comments

What makes this rasp extra special?

[oldspewey]

Honeybee Robotics in New York City did a heroic job of designing and delivering the rasp on a very short schedule

Not to diminish the difficulty of getting something as complex as Phoenix onto the surface of Mars, but seriously how tricky is it to deliver a rasp on a short schedule? I can drive to the nearest Home Depot in about 10 minutes.

Re:What makes this rasp extra special?

[geomobile]

Probably has to be custom made to fit all sorts of geometric, weight, material composition, etc. requirements. Plus a lengthy formal process for quality checking etc.

What I find interesting is the ongoing semantic deterioration of the word heroic.

All hail our heroic... ahm... rasp deliverers!

Is Slashdot NASA's RSS feed?

[ghoti]

This is the second story today on the Mars Lander. How many more will we see? Sure it's interesting, but Phoenix can't be the only news on this site.

Re:let's see the european space agency do that

[KasperMeerts]

Every citizen of Europe gives 60 times less to the ESA a year than a citizen of the USA gives to the NASA a year. And even the NASA doesn't get as much as it should get.
I think the ESA does quite well.

Re:Picture quality

[brunokummel]

How do we get excellent color pics of the eguipment and surroundings and everytime there's some interesting stuff like the ice it's in black and white?

How many colors one expects to see on a martian ice rasping ?