Martian Soil Sample Clogs Phoenix Probe's Oven

space.com ^ | 7 June 2008 | Andrea Thompson

[BenLurkin]

Mars Lander Ping

[chasio649]

Call Roto-Rooter

[Army Air Corps]

It was Marvin the Martian, again.

[Francis McClobber]

The Maytag repair man’s on it.

[LucyT]

[El Sordo]

Hate it when that happens.

[Grizzled Bear]

TEGA's screen is designed to let through particles up to 0.04 inch (1 millimeter) across while keeping out larger particles, in order to prevent clogging a funnel pathway to a tiny oven inside.

Didn't any of the team members consider this possibility when they planned the mission?

Unrelated - why am I getting a mental image of an "EZ Bake Oven?"

[1COUNTER-MORTER-68]

GIT OFF MY LAWN!...;0)

[17th Miss Regt]

Independent Validation & Verification of the design and sioftware might have found this glitch before the lander was built.

[dr_lew]

One thing I’ve noticed is the change in language about the presumed ice layer. Initially they thought they were looking at ice below the lander, but when they scraped at it and had white flecks come up, suddenly they called it “ice or salt”, and slowly “salt” and “salts” creeped into the picture. So what I’m thinking is that THERE IS NO ICE, and that THEY WERE ALL WRONG. Well, it will be interesting. Maybe it is ice. How would I know.

[Southack]

It’s not a software problem.

[17th Miss Regt]

But it may be a design or system requirements problem. Post # 8 also asks about this.

[Cementjungle]

Some jerk on Mars threw his used bubblegum on the ground instead of properly disposing it.

[Dagny&Hank]

Yet more reasons that we need to send a humanned mission to Mars.

[Nathan Zachary]

You’d think they would have built a screen into the scoop itself, with a little door at the bottom of the scoop to let the screened material out and onto the open opening screen. That way they could simply dump out any over sized or clumpy material while it’s still in the scoop rather than trying to “shake” it off the whole lander.

Obviously, they never consulted any excavator operators when they built the thing.

[Nathan Zachary]

“oven opening”

[MARTIAL MONK]

"I think it's the cloddiness of the soil and not having enough fine granular material,"

Ah wisht ah was a rocket scientist.

[trumandogz]

this guy is going to have one long trip for his next repair job.

[etcetera]

The lump of soil is actually a Martian life-form resisting being baked in an oven.