Abstract
IF YOU CAN’T GET the samples to the lab, then take the lab to the samples—even if the samples are on Mars. Humans have become extremely adept at building spacecraft that can analyze alien environments millions of miles away under extreme conditions, from the Mars Exploration Rovers, which scraped and analyzed rocks on the red planet, to the Cassini spacecraft’s Huygens probe that sniffed the atmosphere on Saturn’s moon Titan. Now, scientists are eagerly anticipating an even greater feat of distant intimacy: the first wet chemistry experiments on another planet. The Phoenix spacecraft, the result of collaboration between the Lunar & Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and the National Aeronautics & Space Administration, is scheduled to land on Mars on May 25, after a nine-month journey to the planet. The craft’s payload includes four sensor-laden, beakerlike cells, each ready to receive, dissolve, and test a single soil sample, freshly dug by the ...
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