On planning an expedition

Imagine you are planning a trip from your home in Arizona to a distant and strange unexplored land to collect and analyse the mineral content of its soil. What do you pack?

A shovel......................................................................................Check!
A rake.........................................................................................Check!

Then what do you take to analyse the soil with?

A lab for analysing the soil we have in our back yard...........Check!
A grill over the lab to stop large pebbles clogging it up........Check!

and nothing else?.......................................................................Check!

Wait a minute though - what if the soil isn't loamy or sandy like it is in Arizona?

What if the ground is hard, how about a drill?

What if the soil is light, flakey, or very dusty, how about a broom or a dustpan and brush?

What if the soil is sticky, how about something to wipe things down with?

Perhaps it would be a good idea to consider all these things before setting off.

So why did Phoenix fly all the way to Mars with only have a shovel and a rake and no way of easily picking up what was raked up?

The scientists are once again blaiming Mars, whingeing that the Martian soil isn't what they expected. The complaint "It's like trying to scrape dust up off the sidewalk" has been added to the other moans such as "the soil is very sticky", "the soil is clumpy", and "the ice is not as deep as we expected".

Obviously none of the scientists was a Boy Scout... (Be prepared and carry a Swiss Army Penknife!)

Ok, Ok, I know that Phoenix has a 'rasp' on the end of the robot arm. But the rasp (a last minute addition to Phoenix) is behind the scoop and the scoop has shown itself to be unable to pick up small particles from the hard smooth surface (hence the complaint). To get the icy soil into the scoop the rasp has to spin hard and fast against the ground hopefully spraying flakes of the surface in all directions. Some of the flakes then fall on a small platform by the rasp where they can be manipulated by tilting and wiggling the scoop and arm through a backdoor in the scoop - hardly what one might call a brilliant design.

Come on NASA - this isn't rocket science