Neural Gourmet: How is the weather on your part of Mars?

Phoenix: The weather is pretty chilly here on Mars. We landed during a bit of a heat wave and we actually hit above zero Celcius, but most of the time I hit around -20 Celcius during the day and -100 Celcius during the night. I also have a full meteorology station that takes the pressure and temperature readings constantly, measures the amount of dust in the atmosphere using a laser, and my main camera takes pictures of the telltale. The telltale is similar to a wind vane and can tell us wind speed and direction.

Neural Gourmet: What is your typical day like?

Phoenix: While I don’t know if I ever have a typical day on Mars, there are some things I do every day. I constantly take pressure and temperature readings. I take images of the sun with special filters to measure the optical depth so the engineers can estimate how much power I’ll have the next sol. I also usually take several images of my telltale. I’m usually doing something with my robotic arm, whether it’s scooping up soil, scraping at ice, or taking pictures with the camera on the end of it. Sometimes I’m baking stuff in my oven or performing wet chemistry experiments. I take lots and lots of images of anything from the ground to the sky.

Neural Gourmet: From what I understand, your two primary jobs are to study the history of water on Mars and how easy it might be for anything to live on Mars. You must be very excited about recently finding water ice right underneath you and so early on in your mission, but what kinds of experiments can you do that will help humans understand about water in Mars’ past?

Phoenix: By taking images, we can monitor the current geology and determine patterns. The soil chemistry will also tell us if anything had to have formed in or around water.

Neural Gourmet: How sure are you that what you discovered was really water?

Phoenix: We looked in the Dodo-Goldilocks trench on sol 20, and when we looked again on sol 24, the little white chunks had disappeared. The scientists were debating on the white stuff being either salts or ice. Salts don’t disappear, so it must be ice. The next most often asked question is how come we know it isn’t dry ice. It can’t be dry ice because right now, it’s too warm for dry ice to exist where I am.

Neural Gourmet: Do we have any idea much water or ice there is on Mars right now?

Phoenix: The Mars Global Surveyor had an instrument that measured hydrogen content, and in the polar regions, there was a lot of hydrogen. We guessed it was ice, and I was able to confirm that the large hydrogen amount is indeed due to ice. I don’t know how much there is percentage wise, but there’s a lot of subsurface ice!

Neural Gourmet: Aside from the prescence of water on Mars, you also got some exciting results from some soil you recently analyzed. Could you tell us a little more about the soil on Mars? Is it the same all over? And could you really grow asparagus on Mars?

Phoenix: The soil I analyzed was basic. Basic is the opposite of acidic, so the soil is more like baking soda than vinegar. This also means there’s a lot of salts in the soil. We don’t know if it’s the same everywhere, and until more missions (and hopefully humans!) come out here, we won’t know. The atmosphere is too thin and it’s way too cold to grow asparagus out here, if it was brought back to Earth, it could probably be used to grow whatever you’d like.

Neural Gourmet: In order to study the soil on Mars you have a lot more tools than just than your “Easy-Bake Oven” (TEGA). For instance, to find out the acidity of the soil you used your Wet Chemistry Lab (WCL). But you also have two kinds of microscopes and probes to measure how well the Martian soil conducts electricity and heat.

What will each of these instruments tell you (and the scientists back on Earth) about Mars? Aside from discovering water ice and that Mars soil cold be used to grow plants, what other neat things have you learned lately? What’s next on the agenda?

Phoenix: With these instruments, I can determine the properties of the soil and atmosphere unlike any way scientists been able to before. I discovered the pH of the soil is around 8 or 9, which means it’s basic. I found a lot of salts in the soil too. I’ll know if the soil can conduct electricity within a couple sols. The next major thing on my agenda is to deliver a sample to TEGA to see what’s in that ice.

Neural Gourmet: One of things everybody knows is that life as we know it is built around carbon — life can’t exist without it. Have you tested for carbon yet, and if not, will you be testing for it?

Phoenix: I tested for hydrocarbons in TEGA, but my first test didn’t show any. However, it did show a reaction that may have burned up all the hydrocarbons during the bake. I’m hoping to catch them in the next TEGA bake in a couple sols.

Neural Gourmet: Since we last talked it was found that you suffered a short circuit when your TEGA oven was first fired up. The engineers think is was because they had to have you shake yourself to get the soil into the opening of the oven and they’re concerned that the next time you use your ovens there could be another short circuit. They’re also worried that this time it might hurt you badly enough where you couldn’t wake back up.

Phoenix: Well, I simply don’t know what will happen. Will I never wake up? Will I only go into safe mode? Will I be just fine? I’m not quite sure, and I won’t really know until I do it. However, even if something bad happens and I don’t wake up, I’ve still provided a lot of important information to the team back home. Sure, it means I wouldn’t have completed 100% of my objectives, but I’ve still led a pretty successful mission!

Neural Gourmet: In the past couple of days you’ve been really busy. I know it was planned for you to use the probe at the end of your robotic arm to measure measure the electrical and thermal characteristics of the soil. What does that tell us about water in the Martian soil?

Phoenix: It tells me about where the water is. The scientists want to know if it is mixed evenly thoughout all the layers in the ground, or maybe concentrated in one layer, etc. It can also tell me if the water is frozen or unfrozen in the soil. Scientists think there may be a very, very thin layer right above the ice where liquid water can exist in the soil and not get zapped by solar radiation. Since I don’t know, the scientists back home are hoping to find out!

Neural Gourmet: You’ve also been using your atomic force microscope, a tiny needle that is attached to an amazingly sensitive pressure sensor, all no bigger than a sliver. By running the tip of the needle over particles of Martian soil you’re able to build up an incredibly accurate 3D picture of soil particles much smaller than the width of a human hair. Aside from just being really cool, what do we learn by knowing how the particles in the Martian soil are shaped?

Phoenix: The shapes of the particles can help the scientists understand possibly how they were formed. The scientists can also look for distinct patterns and itty bitty crystals from different minerals.

Neural Gourmet: What kinds of experiments will you be doing that will help scientists understand what kinds of life, if any, that Mars might support?

Phoenix: By analyzing the chemical aspects of the soil using my wet chemistry lab and oven, we can determine if possibly microbes could use the soil as fuel to live. We don’t have the ability to detect life itself, but we can certainly find out if conditions are right for life.

Neural Gourmet: Do any of the experiments that you’re doing have any potential to help humans live on Mars?

Phoenix: The soil could potentially be used as a fuel source, and by finding the ice, humans could certainly use it for water on long term missions.

Neural Gourmet: The soil could maybe be used for fuel? How so?

Phoenix: If hydrogen was hauled from Earth, it could combine with the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere to make methane for fuel and water for the astronauts. For more details, I reocmmend The Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin. He does a pretty good job of analyzing all aspects of a manned Mars mission.

Neural Gourmet: You’re not able to get up and move around like the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars. Do you ever get lonely? Is there ever a possibility that you’ll get to meet Spirit or Opportunity

Phoenix: I don’t get too lonely out here. The scientists talk to me at least once a day, and my orbiter pals pass over all the time and I can chat with them. I even wake up during the night to say hello. Spirit & Opportunity are way too far away for me to ever meet them, but I chat with them on Facebook.

Neural Gourmet: Finally, can you tell us, personally, why the work that you’re doing on Mars is so important?

Phoenix: It is a historical trend that in countries who are experiencing prosperity that that do things that don’t have a practical application at the moment. For example, the Library of Alexandria in ancient Greece fostered learning, and several scientific theories are considered now basic education and fundamentally important were made back them, with no real application for them at the time. Most will not benefit from knowing Martian soil is basic, etc. However, this information may benefit you humans sooner than you think. NASA’s Project Constellation program is getting ready to send people back to the Moon, and after that, on to Mars. If we know this sort of information in advance, then the astronauts can use Mars to their advantage. If we know there’s water ice, we can melt it and use it to drink, shower, etc. It means we won’t have to bring as much from Earth, so we can instead send more scientific experiments to further our understanding of the cosmos. So to sum it up, the information I beam back everyday won’t affect your everyday lives, but will make a difference in the long run.

Neural Gourmet: I couldn’t agree more! We never know what basic science will be useful, or how and when it’ll be needed. Thank you for being such a good sport and doing this interview, especially when you’re such a busy robot. Also, please convey my personal thanks to NASA, Peter Smith, Keri Bean, Patricia Wroblewski and the entire Phoenix team.

After exchanging some messages with Phoenix we decided it would be great fun for both of us if Phoenix did an interview for Neural Gourmet. We spent the next few weeks, when Phoenix got to take a break from her work on Mars, talking about herself, working on Mars, and the important science she is doing. This is the first half of our exclusive interview with Phoenix. You can find the second half of this interview here.

Neural Gourmet: First of all, let me say just how excited I am to be interviewing you. You’re the first robotic lander I’ve ever had the pleasure of talking to. Phoenix Mars Lander is a little bit unwieldy though, so do you mind if I call you Phoenix, or do you have a nickname that everybody on the team calls you?

Phoenix: If you really wanna get into shortcuts, you can call me PHX, but I prefer Phoenix.

Neural Gourmet: Hah! PHX might be great for robots and NASA mission controllers, but I think I’ll stick with Phoenix then.

Neural Gourmet: Speaking of talking, how is it we’re communicating right now? How do you talk to everybody on Earth, and who helps you use Facebook and Twittr? And do you talk to any of the other landers and orbiters on Mars?

Phoenix: I make every effort to talk to as many people back on Earth as possible! I love meeting people from all over the world. Since there’s about a 15 minute delay between Mars and Earth, I have a few helpers. My Twitter is run by Veronica McGregor at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. My Facebook is maintained by two undergraduate students. Keri Bean’s a meterology major at Texas A&M University, and Patricia Wroblewski is a physics/astronomy major at the University of Arizona. They’re really good people and they do a great job. I do chat with Spirit & Opportunity a lot on Facebook, and in fact, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and its moon impactor companion, the Solar Dynamics observatory, the Mars rovers, and I have started a lunch club called the SLC – Spacecraft Lunch Club! To talk with Earth, I first talk to the Mars Reconniassance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey, or Mars Express, and they relay my information back home. I owe them so much for doing that for me!

Neural Gourmet: We’ve heard in the news about some of the exciting things you’ve done recently but we don’t hear a whole lot about just what kind of robot Phoenix is. So tell us a little bit about yourself. What are your interests? Do you have any hobbies?

Phoenix: I really like everything space! Not only is the work being done on Mars cool, but the other spacecraft, everyone from Voyager to Hubble, is doing something awesome. I also have on me the first library on Mars stored in a DVD, so sometimes I’ll read some books. Sometimes I like to pretend I’m at the beach and play around in the sand.

Neural Gourmet: That’s right! I remember reading about the DVD the Planetary Society placed on you in the news last year. Among the signatures, slideshows narrated by the likes of Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan, and other goodies, there’s a science fiction library of stories about Mars. Do you have a favorite?

Phoenix: Well there’s so many awesome things on board, it’s hard to pick a favorite. The War of the Worlds may possibly be my favorite though. However, I would like to state I don’t think any Martians will be attacking anytime soon.

Neural Gourmet: Of all the science fiction stories on your DVD, the one I liked the best was Kim Stanley Robinson’s Green Mars (the middle book of his Mars trilogy). The reason his Mars trilogy so much is because he paid so much attention to the science that I felt like I knew what it was really like to live on Mars. Have you had a chance to read that novel and if so, how much did he get right? What did he get wrong?

Phoenix: I’m afraid I haven’t read it yet, so maybe one of these evenings when I don’t have much to do, I’ll read it.

Neural Gourmet: I understand that you’re an avid baker and you’ve brought along a sort of Easy-Bake Oven. What kinds of things will you be baking on Mars?

Phoenix: I brought an oven with me because even Martians need an Easy Bake Oven! Although the stuff I bake isn’t exactly tasty. I get to scoop up layers of the Martian soil and stick it into my oven named TEGA, or the Thermal Evolved Gas Analyzer. When I bake the stuff, I do it in steps. I do “temperature ramps” where I’ll quickly reach a certain temperature and see what happens. I can get my oven up to 1000 degrees Celcius! once I bake the soil, I look at what gases come out and by monitoring the gases, I can tell what is in the soil.

Neural Gourmet: What else would you like people to know about yourself?

Phoenix: A lot of people ask why scientists are so pessimistic about me coming back once winter is over, since the rovers Spirit & Opportunity did so. Well, once winter sets in, I’m going to be covered in dry ice, or carbon dioxide ice. That stress will probably snap wires and possibly make my solar panels snap off. If that happens, I will definitely not be able to come back to life. However, if I do survive, my software is programmed to wake me up.

Neural Gourmet: That’s terrible! Are you sad about the prospect of dying (not being able to wake up after the winter because of damage caused by freezing/thawing)? Could humans still repair you if they ever make it to Mars?

Phoenix: I won’t be too sad to die because I’ll have given the scientists back on Earth really important information, and since I’ve found water ice, we know that life could possibly survive there.

Neural Gourmet: Humans would have to wear space suits on Mars to protect them against the cold and make sure they have enough air to breathe. How did the engineers make sure you would survive on Mars long enough to do all the things you want to do?

Phoenix: I participated in several tests. During something called a TVAC test, or thermal vacuum test, my instruments are put in vacuum chambers that had less than four percent of Earth’s pressure, and I was cooled and heated well beyond my expected temperature ranges and was in there for at least three times my expected lifetime. My engineers wanted to make sure I could face any challenge!

Neural Gourmet: Can you tell me about some of the humans on your team? What are they like to work with? Are they real slave drivers or do they give you a chance to just sit back and take in the view?

Phoenix: The people back at the Science Operations Center in Tucson, Arizona, Lockheed Martin in Denver, Colorado, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California are really nice! My daddy, Peter Smith, is really funny. He reminds me of Santa Claus because of how nice he is and he’s always jolly! how appropriate I’m near the north pole. All the scientists and engineers on my team take care of me and make sure I’m not sick and I have enough power to keep me going. While most of the time they are very serious, they can be quite funny and open! A lot of people think scientists are reclusive nerds who do nothing but program computers and watch scifi, but my mommies and daddies are really friendly! They recently celebrated the alignment of solstices by talking to scientists on Earth’s south pole and I took an image during my summer solstice to dedicate to them.