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The Planetary Society Blog

By Emily Lakdawalla

Catching up with Phoenix to sol 133: Digging at La Mancha, grabbing Galloping Hessians from Pet Donkey

Oct. 9, 2008 | 14:40 PDT | 21:40 UTC

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Don't blame me for the names. I'm just the messenger. There's been a fury of digging lately on Phoenix, and that means a flurry of new names to figure out. When I last mapped out the work volume (the area within reach of the robotic arm), this is what it looked like:

Click to enlarge >

The Phoenix "work volume" as of sol 96
Pink text indicates the approximate locations of samples delivered to MECA, and green text indicates samples delivered to TEGA. Small gray text indicates named rocks. The base panorama consists of images captured on sol 84. Credit: NASA / JPL / UA / Texas A & M / mosaic by James Canvin / map by Emily Lakdawalla

Since sol 117 -- which was the day that Phoenix moved the rock named Headless aside, scooping it forward into the trench called Neverland -- there's been a boatload of digging and sample deliveries, as the Phoenix team tries to make the most of their little remaining time. Here's a quick look at how the work volume appeared as of just two sols ago.

Click to enlarge >

Panorama across the Phoenix work volume, sol 131
Phoenix took this six-image panorama across the upper part of its work volume on sol 131. It documents the locations of two new trenches, in the center of the work volume, named La Mancha and Pet Donkey. Other relatively recent changes are a new dump pile, Bee Tree, to the right of center at the top. Between Bee Tree and Croquet Grounds (the dump pile at extreme right) is a new divot in the soil, where the sample called Rosy Red N was collected. Credit: NASA / JPL / UA / Texas A & M

With the new digging comes a pile of new names. Here's my best attempt at putting those names on my work volume map. It's even more cluttered than before because I've also added, in yellow, the locations of all the samples that have been delivered to the Optical Microscope.

Click to enlarge >

The Phoenix "work volume" as of sol 130
Pink text indicates the approximate locations of samples delivered to MECA's Wet Chemistry Laboratory (WCL); yellow text, samples delivered to the Optical Microscope (OM); and green text indicates samples delivered to TEGA. Small gray text indicates named rocks and dump piles. The base panorama consists of images captured on sol 84.

The deliveries happened according to the following schedule:
Sol 12: Baby Bear to TEGA 4 (in oven sol 16)
Sol 17: Mama Bear to OM
Sol 26: Rosy Red to OM
Sol 30: Rosy Red to WCL 0
Sol 38: Sorceress to OM
Sol 41: Sorceress to WCL 1
Sol 64: Wicked Witch to TEGA 0
Sol 67: Mother Goose to OM
Sol 72: Rosy Red 3 to TEGA 5
Sol 75: Wicked Witch to OM
Sol 85: Burning Coals to TEGA 7
Sol 96: Golden Goose to WCL 3
Sol 99: Golden Key to OM
Sol 101: Golden Goose to OM
Sol 102: Golden Goose to WCL 3 (2nd attempt)
Sol 107: Sorceress to WCL 2
Sol 110: Golden Goose to OM
Sol 113: ??? to TEGA
Sol 120: Sam McGee to TEGA 1
Sol 126: Wicked Witch 2 to TEGA 1
Sol 128: Galloping Hessian to OM
Sol 131: Rosy Red N to TEGA 6
Credit: NASA / JPL / UA / Texas A & M / mosaic by James Canvin / map by Emily Lakdawalla

There remains only one unopened oven on TEGA. The mission says that they'll probably have to quit using the arm by the end of this month.

Check out the Robotic Arm Camera raw images page; there's lots of new images there, including several attempts to record dust devil movies (I didn't have time to check if they were successful in catching any on camera). And the sol-by-sol summary is now up-to-date as of sol 133.

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