Dandruff and the Phoenix Lander?
You don't spend $420-million on a Mars lander only to discover human dandruff, but that's what Nature is saying may happen once the TEGA instrument receives its first sample of Martian soil. If true, NASA scientists may want to incorporate liberal amounts of Head & Shoulders in their future bathing regimen.
Read More (Source: Nature)The search for the organic building blocks of life has been a major selling point for Phoenix; many press accounts have eagerly, yet mistakenly, foreshortened the mission’s raison d’etre to ‘the search for life’. Yet some mission scientists say that it is the science goal least likely to succeed, partly because TEGA is so sensitive that it may end up sensing only contamination from Earth.
“We will see organics, for sure, because we’re bringing them,” says Aaron Zent, a mission scientist from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California. Likely contaminants include skin flakes, dead microbes and volatile lubricants. “The problem with an instrument so sensitive is all you detect is your own schmutz,” says Zent.
