Phoenix Microscope Takes First Image of Martian Dust Particle
- From: baalke@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:40:52 -0700 (PDT)
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-158
Phoenix Microscope Takes First Image of Martian Dust Particle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
August 14, 2008
TUCSON, Ariz. - NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has taken the first-ever
image of a single particle of Mars' ubiquitous dust, using its atomic
force microscope.
The particle -- shown at higher magnification than anything ever seen
from another world -- is a rounded particle about one micrometer, or
one
millionth of a meter, across. It is a speck of the dust that cloaks
Mars. Such dust particles color the Martian sky pink, feed storms that
regularly envelop the planet and produce Mars' distinctive red soil.
"This is the first picture of a clay-sized particle on Mars, and the
size agrees with predictions from the colors seen in sunsets on the
Red
Planet," said Phoenix co-investigator Urs Staufer of the University of
Neuchatel, Switzerland, who leads a Swiss consortium that made the
microscope.
"Taking this image required the highest resolution microscope operated
off Earth and a specially designed substrate to hold the Martian
dust,"
said Tom Pike, Phoenix science team member from Imperial College
London.
"We always knew it was going to be technically very challenging to
image
particles this small."
It took a very long time, roughly a dozen years, to develop the device
that is operating in a polar region on a planet now about 350 million
kilometers or 220 million miles away.
The atomic force microscope maps the shape of particles in three
dimensions by scanning them with a sharp tip at the end of a spring.
During the scan, invisibly fine particles are held by a series of pits
etched into a substrate microfabricated from a silicon wafer. Pike's
group at Imperial College produced these silicon microdiscs.
The atomic force microscope can detail the shapes of particles as
small
as about 100 nanometers, about one one-thousandth the width of a human
hair. That is about 100 times greater magnification than seen with
Phoenix's optical microscope, which made its first images of Martian
soil about two months ago. Until now, Phoenix's optical microscope
held
the record for producing the most highly magnified images to come from
another planet.
"I'm delighted that this microscope is producing images that will help
us understand Mars at the highest detail ever," Staufer said. "This is
proof of the microscope's potential. We are now ready to start doing
scientific experiments that will add a new dimension to measurements
being made by other Phoenix lander instruments."
"After this first success, we're now working on building up a portrait
gallery of the dust on Mars," Pike added.
Mars' ultra-fine dust is the medium that actively links gases in the
Martian atmosphere to processes in Martian soil, so it is critically
important to understanding Mars' environment, the researchers said.
The particle seen in the atomic force microscope image was part of a
sample scooped by the robotic arm from the "Snow White" trench and
delivered to Phoenix's microscope station in early July. The
microscope
station includes the optical microscope, the atomic force microscope
and
the sample delivery wheel. It is part of a suite of tools called
Phoenix's Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer.
The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith from the University of
Arizona
with project management at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif., and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver.
International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the
University of Neuchatel; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus in
Denmark; the Max Planck Institute in Germany; and the Finnish
Meteorological Institute. The California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.
The latest Phoenix images and information are at
http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Media contacts: Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@xxxxxxxx
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