TEGA - Round 2 Options

[01101001]

This should be enough for an oven run on samples with the ice sublimated out. (Sol 64, 1127 local time)

[slinted]

Here's a color view from SSI taken around the same time on sol 64:

[Astro0]

Animation of the sample dump.

[Shaka]

Danged oven must be full by now!
Let's get cookin'!

[peter59]

It looks like .... loading oven #5 ??

[akuo]

The Tamu SSI site says tosol's (sol 72) tasks were "RR3 acquire, delivery, and site documentation; atmo and surface remote sensing"

RR3 must be a TEGA sample, but what is it?

[01101001]

RR3 must be a TEGA sample, but what is it?

My guess "Rosy Red 3". I don't recall a Rosy Red 2. But Snow White was imaged a lot this sol, and Rosy Red came from near Snow White (and went into the MECA). This is probably an attempt to take a suspect perchlorate sample cousin and look for more confirmation with TEGA.

[slinted]

Here's the color view of TEGA from sol 72 after delivery

[tanjent]

I don't know if the topic line here is broad enough to embrace speculation about alternative sample delivery mechanisms, but as I watch the tailings pile up around the TEGA doors, I can't help wondering if a vacuum cleaner could be devised to work in a low-pressure Mars environment. If so, some future mission might want to include one. Earthly vacuum cleaners do a pretty efficient job of delivering their dust and soil samples into the little paper bag - it would be nice if we had one up there we could just command to "suck this little patch of digging debris into oven number n". And when it wasn't doing science it could even clean up after itself.- keeping the lander deck photogenically neat and tidy. Discharging the vacuumed materials where they won't come back to contaminate future samples could pose a problem, but so far it doesn't look like the existing design handles that issue very well either. In science and engineering, elegant solutions usually look, well, elegant. What could be more elegant than a robot on Mars with housekeeping capabilities?

[James Sorenson]

Looking at slinted's color image of the soil that has fallen on the top's of those doors, when those doors open, I cant help but think that is gonna just slide into the oven as a contaminate sample.

[centsworth_II]

...I cant help but think that is gonna just slide into the oven as a contaminate sample.

It does look like once the next oven opens, it will be hard to avoid having soil from the ridge slide into it.

http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?...949&cID=207

[bgarlick]

Yes, it does appear that now *every* remaining oven has at least some soil perched above its door so that when it is opened some soil may fall in. Pure, controlled, TEGA sampling and testing no longer looks possible.

A vacuum was suggested, but what about a simple coring mechanism on the end of the arm for taking core samples of soil or ice and then delivering/extruding them into on-deck instruments precisely with no spill. Maybe in 20-20 hindsight such a simple mechanism may have worked better.

(The funnel shaped channel in the bottom of the scoop looks like it could have better directed sample delivery, but it does not seem to work because of the clumpyness. In dry powder-like simulants I am sure it does a fine job of precise sample delivery...)

[ElkGroveDan]

Maybe in 20-20 hindsight such a simple mechanism may have worked better.

Maybe it was proposed, evaluated and ruled out for any number of reasons already.

[jmknapp]

And when it wasn't doing science it could even clean up after itself.- keeping the lander deck photogenically neat and tidy.

An early proposal:

[Greg Hullender]

Wouldn't it be simpler to devise something to blow the area clean after each experiment? Seems to me it'd be difficult to get suction in a near vacuum.

--Greg