Digging for Ice, Life-Supporting Conditions on Mars

Dave on Earth (5:28 PM) Buenos dias Mark, this is Dave Mosher from Discovery Space!

Mars Photographer (5:28 PM) Hi. So, haven't interviewed this way before...

Dave on Earth (5:29 PM) It's quite fun. And if you need to eat or drink, no worries about the sounds or anything.

Mars Photographer (5:29 PM) Yes, and it is actually about dinner time for me!

Dave on Earth (5:30 PM) Well there you go.
Thanks a lot for doing this -- I know Phoenix Mars Lander scientists don't have a lot of time to spare these days.

Mars Photographer (5:30 PM) Well, with the schedule shifts, it's hard to know when and where you are some times.

Dave on Earth (5:31 PM) Do you know right now? I'm in New York City. It's about 5:30 p.m.

Mars Photographer (5:31 PM) Yep, I'm happily in Tucson, Arizona at the SOC. I even remembered what day it was.

Dave on Earth (5:31 PM) What's the SOC?

Mars Photographer (5:32 PM) The SOC is the Phoenix Science Operations Center, a mission control center if you will, at the University of Arizona. We get the downlink from Mars and plan its activities, check health, all that.
The place is pretty much all of Earth that I see, it seems. It's weird being in the outside world... Everything seems really novel.

Dave on Earth (5:33 PM) Web site production can be like that some times, so I feel you.
Any ways, what have you been up to with Phoenix lately?

Mars Photographer (5:34 PM) Lately we have been scraping around the icy "Snow White" trench we've dug.
It's fun watching the trench. We scrape and see a dark, hard surface. Then the surface turns bluish (really just less red).
After awhile it looks like the rest of the dirt... so sublimation of the ice turns a nice clean surface dirty again.
So, we clean, and clean, and clean...

Dave on Earth (5:36 PM) ...trying to get at some ice, right?

Mars Photographer (5:37 PM) Yep. We want to clean the ice off, drill into it to get a sample, and then deliver that sample to Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer, or TEGA.

Dave on Earth (5:37 PM) The TEGA is the oven that bakes the sample into a gas so Phoenix can sniff for chemicals, correct?

Mars Photographer (5:38 PM) Correct, and this is all highly choreographed -- scrape, rasp, take images of the sample, deliver it, and analyze the ice content.

Dave on Earth (5:38 PM) Reminds me of one of those robot challenges students do, where you have to program the machines to do things like pick up a rubber ball and drop it into a cup.
Except that you're doing it from 200 million miles away.

Mars Photographer (5:40 PM) Sorry, just had to answer a tactical question. It's pretty busy in here

Dave on Earth (5:41 PM) No problem! Science first.

Mars Photographer (5:41 PM) Actually, we had some high school students in here today. They showed us their robot arm.

Dave on Earth (5:42 PM) How did it match up to the Phoenix robotic arm?

Mars Photographer (5:42 PM) It was partly inspired by it. It even had an approximation of the thermal/electric conductivity probe. Not quite space qualified, though ;^)

Dave on Earth (5:43 PM) I wouldn't think so :) So what else ont he books for Phoenix?

Mars Photographer (5:43 PM) We really want to do some exploration trenching, and we have some wet chemistry to pursue, too.

Dave on Earth (5:44 PM) What are you looking for?

Mars Photographer (5:45 PM) Well, one thing we want to understand better is the gradient of salts and such as you go deeper. To do that means, hopefully, finding a deeper patch of soil.

Dave on Earth (5:46 PM) I see. Speaking of the soil, there was recently a lot of hoopla about calling Martian dirt "soil."
Have you figured out if the soil is -- or was at some point -- habitable by microbes?

Mars Photographer (5:46 PM) We don't have a true habitability assessment yet because we haven't used TEGA under the top layer. That's where we might hope to see organics, because UV light at the surface breaks them down.
The news ("asparagus gardens") was stimulated by results showing slightly alkaline soils, rather than highly acidic soils that some expected.
I think people are excited by the Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) results, which show a non-threatening dirt/soil.
We'll need months of comparing data to say whether or not the soil is or was habitable. But we'll definitely get previews out to the public as soon as we have reasonable confidence.
Hopefully some TEGA organics results in the next week or so.

Mars Photographer (5:49 PM) By the way, we're also starting a new panorama now. We have the full site in color, and are working to releasing that soon.

Dave on Earth (5:49 PM) Very cool - and can I pop on my 3-D glasses for the finished image?

Mars Photographer (5:50 PM) We'll have a nice 3-D version soon, but we want to show off the color first.

Dave on Earth (5:50 PM) Shifting gears here: you said earlier it's hard to know when/where you're at sometimes.
What have you had to sacrifice to take on this mission?

Mars Photographer (5:50 PM) Well, I've just spent 2 days at home. That's the first time I've seen my house since April. Same for colleagues at work.
My family was able to travel, but our baby does not get Mars time at all.
So some times, I see them rarely, even living in the same house. Other times, I get to have dinner when they have breakfast.
A big career-type sacrifice is just all the time that goes into my first job-- Surface Stereo Imager (SSI) lead -- and my second -- strategic science planning.
Those have taken away from my ability to write papers, teach etc. -- all things my university would like. But, of course, they like the mission too.

Dave on Earth (5:53 PM) I think you did some of this on the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) mission, too.
Do you ever think "why the heck am I doing this?"