فونیکس دچار مشکل می شود

فونیکس دچار مشکل می شود

بروز اختلال در یکی از ابزارهای حفاری مریخ‌نشین
«فونیکس» و استراحت بر تکه یخ‌های قطب شمال مریخ

NASA's Phoenix Lander Robotic Arm Camera Sees Possible Ice

ENGLISH   AND PERSIAN

NASA's Phoenix Lander Robotic Arm Camera Sees Possible Ice

 

 

TUCSON, Ariz.-- Scientists have discovered what may be ice that was exposed when soil was blown away as NASA's Phoenix spacecraft landed on Mars last Sunday, May 25. The possible ice appears in an image the robotic arm camera took underneath the lander, near a footpad.

"We could very well be seeing rock, or we could be seeing exposed ice in the retrorocket blast zone," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., co-investigator for the robotic arm. "We'll test the two ideas by getting more data, including color data, from the robotic arm camera. We think that if the hard features are ice, they will become brighter because atmospheric water vapor will collect as new frost on the ice.

"Full confirmation of what we're seeing will come when we excavate and analyze layers in the nearby workspace," Arvidson said.

Testing last night of a Phoenix instrument that bakes and sniffs samples to identify ingredients identified a possible short circuit. This prompted commands for diagnostic steps to be developed and sent to the lander in the next few days. The instrument is the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer. It includes a calorimeter that tracks how much heat is needed to melt or vaporize substances in a sample, plus a mass spectrometer to examine vapors driven off by the heat. The Thursday, May 29, tests recorded electrical behavior consistent with an intermittent short circuit in the spectrometer portion.

"We have developed a strategy to gain a better understanding of this behavior, and we have identified workarounds for some of the possibilities," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, lead scientist for the instrument.

The latest data from the Canadian Space Agency's weather station shows another sunny day at the Phoenix landing site with temperatures holding at minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit) as the sol's high, and a low of minus 80 degrees Celsius (minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit). The lidar instrument was activated for a 15-minute period just before noon local Mars time, and showed increasing dust in the atmosphere.

"This is the first time lidar technology has been used on the surface of another planet," said the meteorological station's chief engineer, Mike Daly, from MDA in Brampton, Canada. "The team is elated that we are getting such interesting data about the dust dynamics in the atmosphere."

The mission passed a "safe to proceed" review on Thursday evening, meeting criteria to proceed with evaluating and using the science instruments.

"We have evaluated the performance of the spacecraft on the surface and found we're ready to move forward. While we are still investigating instrument performance such as the anomaly on TEGA [Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer], the spacecraft's infrastructure has passed its tests and gets a clean bill of health," said David Spencer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., deputy project manager for Phoenix.

"We're still in the process of checking out our instruments," Phoenix project scientist Leslie Tamppari of JPL said. "The process is designed to be very flexible, to respond to discoveries and issues that come up every day. We're in the process of taking images and getting color information that will help us understand soil properties. This will help us understand where best to first touch the soil and then where and how best to dig."

                                       بروز اختلال در یکی از ابزارهای حفاری مریخ‌نشین
«فونیکس» و استراحت بر تکه یخ‌های قطب شمال مریخ

ترجمه

دانشمندان فضاپیمای «فونیکس» در حال دست و پنجه نرم کردن برای رفع مشکل اتصالی جریان برق متناوب در این کاوشگر هستند.

دانشمندان گفته‌اند مشکلی که در خصوص اتصالی برق متناوب مریخ‌نشین «فونیکس» رخ داده است مربوط به یکی از ابزارهایی می‌شود که قرار است به حفر خاک و یخ در سطح مریخ بپردازد.

این اتصالی جریان برق طی آزمایش‌های پیش از انجام ماموریت اتفاق افتاده است.

ویلیام بوی تون از آزمایشگاه اقمار و سیارات دانشگاه آریزونا گفت: این اتصالی برق مشکلی چندان جدی نیست.

وی که مسوول ابزار گرم کننده و تحلیلگر نمونه‌های گرفته شده توسط بازوی رباتیک است، می‌گوید : دانشمندان علت وقوع این اتصالی برق و چگونگی آن را می دانند و هم اکنون در حال برطرف کردن آن هستند.

اعضای گروه مسوول بازوی رباتیک اعلام کردند : تصاویر جدید فونیکس را در حال استراحت بر روی تکه‌های بزرگ یخ نشان می‌دهند.

مریخ‌نشین فونیکس ماموریت دارد، طی سه ماه سفر خود در مریخ منطقه قطب شمال این سیاره را بررسی و امکان وجود حیات را طی چندین آزمایش را مورد تحقیق قرار دهد.

رهبری این ماموریت را دانشگاه آریزونای تاکسون به عهده داشته و مدیریت آن به عهده آزمایشگاه پیشرانش

جت (JPL) آژانس فضایی آمریکا NASA است.