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Article: Searching for habitability on Red Planet: Phoenix will dredge the Martian landscape with its robotic arm and onboard instruments.(STORY ONE)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- May 24, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A NEW EMISSARY FROM EARTH IS SET TO parachute onto Mars on May 25, making it the first craft to land on the Red Planet's north polar region and the first since the 1970s built to find life-friendly places.
NASA's $386-million Phoenix Mars Lander features a robotic arm--similar to a backhoe--that will dig trenches up to half a meter deep in the frigid soil, scraping and scooping up samples of ice that previous satellite studies indicate lie just a few centimeters beneath the surface. Phoenix will deliver those samples to onboard detectors--eight miniature ovens, four laboratory wet cells and a mass spectrometer--to determine if the ...