Smart money's on organic-free blank. It's the whitest thing around.

The wind was blowing when the delivery was attempted, if you believe the telltale. It was hopping around 10:30 local time that sol.

Sol 122 Raw Images

For instance, at 1033 local:

Aw, hell!.....and I was gonna make a snowman!

Sol 123 Raw Images

Source of the white stuff, the Organic-Free Blank:

The Organic Free Blank (OFB)

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2008/pdf/1067.pdf (top of page 2)


MARS 2007 PHOENIX SCOUT MISSION ORGANIC FREE BLANK: METHOD TO DISTINQUISH MARS ORGANICS FROM TERRESTRIAL ORGANICS. [/b]
D.W. Ming1, R.V. Morris1, R. Woida2, B. Sutter3, H.V. Lauer3, C. Shinohara2, D.C. Golden3, W.V. Boynton2, R.E. Arvidson4, R.L. Stewart5, L.K. Tamppari6, M. Gross6, P. Smith2, and the Phoenix Science Team. 1ARES, NASA Johnson Space Center, Mail Code KX, Houston, TX 77058 (douglas.w.ming@nasa.gov), 2Lunar & Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 3Jacobs Engineering, ESCG, Houston, TX, 4Dept. Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, 5Corning Incorporated, Corning, NY, 6Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.

Mars weather report from Sol 109 is on the Univ. of Arizona Phoenix web page.

We do not want talking about the subject of the press conf, don't we ?

They are probably going to unveil a picture of a beautiful sunset. That's all.

And Sol 112 weather now up.

Mmh, during the last press conf they wore a witch hat to talk about Wicked Witch.

I wonder if they'll talk about Snow White today.

so, you KNEW IT : http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/phoenix/relea...?ArticleID=1886

Hmm, it appears Christmas has fortunately come early to Phoenix. Not only has snow been detected, but also some decent evidence for carbonate and clay. That's pretty exciting news.

The Phoenix Mars Lander's robotic arm successfully delivered soil into oven six of the lander’s thermal and evolved-gas analyzer, or TEGA, on Monday, Oct. 13, or the 137th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.
The University of Arizona news.

That's some good news at least. No mention where the soil was from, though. The article also mentions that six of the ovens have been used so far. Therefore there has been one succesful delivery between the last teleconf and this sample acquisition. Likely an OFB sample delivery was finally succesful?

I may be judging the goals of the TEGA without full information, but I feel that the instrument will have failed unless they manage to sample the ice completely. This is seperate from the actual mission goals, which always are set very conservatively for the equipment and the luck of the draw in the actual landing site. The mission goals would have been satisfied if Phoenix had landed in a completely dry place, with no ice at all.

Considering that they have landed in a place with obvious and abundant ice within easy access, it will be a huge disappointment if that ice isn't analysed properly.

Phoenix was extensively tested to make sure that all the critical gremlins in the landing process were found. The same dilligence should be applied on the most important science instruments of the mission. This doesn't help Phoenix at the moment, but must be taken into consideration for complex future instruments with expected mission times many times the Phoenix prime mission.

Well, duh. (For non-native English speakers, that denotes a reaction to a very obvious statement.)

This was done for every instrument on Phoenix. It's just that you really can't test one-shot operations that will be performed in conditions and with materials that simply can't be replicated on Earth, if they are even known in advance. Is TEGA in 20-20 hindsight poorly designed? I have no idea. Was it "extensively tested"? Of course it was.

Yes, but saying "the instrument [TEGA] will have failed unless they manage to sample the ice completely" is way off. TEGA provided much soil analysis data.