NASA's Mars lander delivers 1st soil sample to microscope

WASHINGTON, June 12 (Xinhua) -- NASA said images received on Thursday confirmed that its Phoenix Mars lander has sprinkled a spoonful of Martian soil onto the sample wheel of the spacecraft’s robotic microscope station.

"It looks like a light dusting and that's just what we wanted," said Michael Hecht of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who is the lead scientist for the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) instrument on Phoenix.

The delivery of scooped-up soil for inspection by the lander's Optical Microscope, a component of MECA, marks the second success in consecutive days for getting samples delivered to laboratory instruments on Phoenix's deck.

Some soil from an earlier scoopful by the Robotic Arm reached a tiny oven in another instrument on Tuesday, as confirmed in data received early Wednesday. That instrument is the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA.

New commands being sent to Phoenix on Thursday include instructions to close the TEGA oven and begin analyzing the sample inside, a process that will take several days, NASA Phoenix team reported.