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

Universe's most expensive snow cone

[elrous0]

And you don't even get cherry flavoring.

Re:Universe's most expensive snow cone

[192939495969798999]

In my day, we ate our rust-flavored snow cones and we liked 'em!

Sublimation?

[WmLGann]

I thought I read that the first ice that was uncovered sublimated over night. In fact I recall that was what made the scientists sure that the white rocks were ice. I would think that shavings made by a rasp (rather, a 5-figure space age rasp-like device developed by a subcontractor that wasn't Craftsman or Snap-on) would sublimate rather quickly. What am I missing?

Re:Sublimation?

[Nyago]

From Phoenix's Twitter page:

MarsPhoenix: Team wants to see how quickly test shavings sublimate (turn to vapor) to help them estimate how quickly I need to move real samples to oven.

Re:Sublimation?

[necro81]

The sublimation they noticed was subtle, not total. The ice the rover uncovered didn't sublimate completely away, it just diminished enough for them to notice it. In this case, they'll gather the sample and process it quickly enough that they'll still have a fair bit to work with.

Re:Sublimation?

[loafula]

I would hope that NASA considered this already. I imagine that the rasp will loosen a sufficient enough quantity so that the ice won't completely sublimate by the time it reaches the testing oven. Sure some will, but hopefully not all of it.

Also, I believe what is important here is not necessarily the H2O ice itself, but what else is contained within it. Even if the ice sublimates, all the minerals, salts, and creepy-crawlies should be left behind.

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!

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.

Picture quality

[FaytLeingod]

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?

Re:Picture quality

[Born2bwire]

Filters. The camera is not black and white but is actually sensitive to light across a wide spectrum. When they want to take a picture of a specific range of light, they use a filter to remove all the extraneous wavelengths. In this manner, they use a series of filters in the visible region to get an idea for the color content across narrow spectrums and use that to reproduce a full color image. Like the way that a monitor only uses red, green, and blue to reproduce a full color picture (although this works mainly because our eyes are mainly sensitive to those three colors).

Pap Smear

[Hoplite3]

Wait ... Rasp ... Snow White's trench ... Mars is getting a pap smear! She's really into preventative medicine.

Ice shavings

[rarel]

Fuck everything, we're doing five blades!

Re:Is Slashdot NASA's RSS feed?

[bondjamesbond]

You read it wrong. We are "News for Mars, Stuff that Gathers", you insensitive clod.