From http://ciclops.org/index.php
"And most exciting of all: the highest temperatures now measured are about 180 Kelvins, some 63 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than estimated from previous measurements. Though by no means a guarantee, these results make the possibility of liquid water close to the surface of the moon even more likely. Sacre bleu!..."

Water water everywhere !!!!!

I found it....

Phoenix mission sucess criteria

Even if the soil was wet and later it dried out, there is always a chance some moisture remains on a microscopic level, and the TEGA will detect that. It's like damp sand v dripping wet sand, if you know what I mean, its still at some level of wetness......

Some sol 18 pics came down.
Looks like they greatly elongated the trenches.

http://www.met.tamu.edu/mars/i/SS018EFF897...6_12540R2M1.jpg

The analysis is not specifically designed to determine why the soil was clumpy. They said it might have just clumped together on the screen as they dumped too much in one go. In future they will quickly chop the soil up and only dribble a little onto a screen. The analysis will determine all of the gases that were in the soil/rock particles, that's the whole point of TEGA. Later they will dig down further and do more analysis, and finally dig and scape up the presumed water ice and test it, I guess when they do that they will get Hydrogen and Oxygen - H2O............

They are nice pictures. Makes a change to see something new after so many months.

Sol 17 pics just came down.

http://www.met.tamu.edu/mars/017.html

This place is dripping wet then ?

Cooking tonight !!!!, or a little later infact........

I can't run rm files at work .
I have stills of nasa tv though.

Lol I was just going to say Lift off !

Its not as flat as a pancake is it ? Quite interesting in fact, can't wait for the full res colour...........

Hope it doesn't rain or snow.......ha ha ha.............

There are plenty of positive things about Phoenix of course. We have colour and 3d pics of the northern tundra. Pretty sure we see ice under the lander. Temperatures, pressures and wind direction. Microscope views of the dust/dirt. I am sure I missed a few things too.

Hey did ya'll notice the salt shaker in that picture ?

Level ? It's off by 1/3 of a degree, they should have included screw adjustments on the legs........

I still maintain they poured way too much soil onto that oven opening.

Keep the good work up Stu, we all appreciate it. I tried making my own but could not find the matching pairs on the UA website.

I am not convinced myself.

Also the next set of doors are well covered in dirt, as the first set did not open correctly with out anything ontop of them it does not bode well for the future. I wonder if the team had tested this situation out, I'd be astonished if they had not.

The trench will only be as deep as the topsoil, and that seems about 5 cm. A narrow tench is also a good trench. Seems to me the scoop is four times as wide as the oven doors which makes no sense to me. Surly the accuracy of the RA can deliver soil to any 1 cm spot it can reach ?

I suspect the soil does not flow into the funnel at all, and the soil all sticks together and slides out in one lump.

Oh oh, lots of head scratching at UA.

Seems to me they needed a narrower scoop.

That sounds like a good idea.

The web page with the sundial disappeared, anyone know what happened ?