Sol 3 and onwards - imaging Options

[djellison]

Keeping with the practice of sol-by-sol discussions, here it is.

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

LOL The press have such short attention spans. The mission has hardly started and most of them have gone. lol

[JRehling]

LOL The press have such short attention spans. The mission has hardly started and most of them have gone. lol

A few media outlets (worst of all, DrudgeReport) overhyped the mission with headlines like "Life on Mars?" which would naturally give the readership a hangover when they find out: that absolutely no evidence of any kind has yet been collected by the mission; that the instruments on the mission are not even capable of detecting life when they do start operating.

For those people who read headlines alone, the discovery of life on Mars is already ancient history, even though it never happened. But it will continue to "happen" every few years.

[stevelu]

the instruments on the mission are not even capable of detecting life when they do start operating.

I've been wondering about that.

Are they going to vaporize all the H2O they collect to analyze it for organic compounds?

If I ran the zoo, I would definitely take a bit of ice, at least once, gently warm it to 5 degrees C or so, and turn the microscope loose on the liquid results. Long shot? Sure, but worth trying. Does anyone know these sorts of details about the science plan? and about what exactly the microsope is intended to examine? Mineral/crystal/etc. structures and (conceivably) oven-safe fossils only??

[rlorenz]

Are they going to vaporize all the H2O they collect to analyze it for organic compounds?
If I ran the zoo, I would definitely take a bit of ice, at least once, gently warm it to 5 degrees C or so, and turn the microscope loose on the liquid results. Long shot? Sure, but worth trying. Does anyone know these sorts of details about the science plan? and about what exactly the microsope is intended to examine? Mineral/crystal/etc. structures and (conceivably) oven-safe fossils only??

Good thing you dont run the zoo.

If you warmed the ice to 5 deg C it would boil away quickly. Even exposed ice may sublime away in minutes-hours.

The ovens in TEGA are about 3mm in dia (see http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~rlorenz/TEGA.pdf )
so you can't get a microscope (which is an entirely different instrument elsewhere on the lander) into them
(the point is after all to seal the oven (and once you seal each one, you cant unseal it)
so you can look for water vapor, organics etc that are evolved. NB
big difference between TEGA on MPL and TEGA-II on PHX is that while the TA ovens are the same, the EGA
is very different - an absorption spectrometer for CO2 and H2O on TEGA-1, but a mass spec for TEGA-II that
might also detect organics.

But I dont think soil sampling is planned for a few sols yet.

[stevelu]

Good thing you dont run the zoo.

If you warmed the ice to 5 deg C it would boil away quickly. Even exposed ice may sublime away in minutes-hours.

The ovens in TEGA are about 3mm in dia (see http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~rlorenz/TEGA.pdf )
so you can't get a microscope (which is an entirely different instrument elsewhere on the lander) into them

Thanks for your reply.

"So, it's impossible. How long will it take?"
- Leslie Neilson's (yes, that Leslie Neilson) proto-Kirk character in Forbidden Planet

But, if I ran the zoo I would listen to my engineers. So my question would be -- back of the envelope estimate, how much cost & complexity would it add to a lander such as this to provide for a small, sealed 'sllde' (i.e. chamber) in(to) which ice could be melted, to then be imaged at say 200x?

Ideally several different magnifications of course, but let's start simple, especially as in this thought experiment it sounds like we need a lens assembly put in place for this single purpose.

I'm hoping that at least by the time we get to Europa such a capability will be included.

dont think soil sampling is planned for a few sols yet.

True enough. My excuse for bringing this up now is that I'm trying to manage my expectations, and to put the science that we can expect into context -- at least for myself.

Also, my martian friends, who were anxious that they might be exposed (and y'know "there goes the neighborhood") by Phoenix, are breathing much easier now.