Things are not going well on Mars

Phoenix is looking more and more like a turkey.

After a week of practicing Phoenix managed to get 3cc of icy Martian soil into its scoop - yipee!

But having got it in there it now won't come out! The robotic arm poised the scoop over the open doors of probably the last Tega oven and tipped the scoop upside down....

and almost nothing came out. Have a look at Nasa's photo here.

The sticky soil problem struck again - once again the icy soil has behaved like deep frozen ice cream and first melted on contact with the scoop and then refroze just like ice cream does on a spoon when it is straight out of the freezer.

So now what? There is a little soil in the Tega oven - but not enough for it to trigger the closing of the oven door to start the baking. They could try to shake the scoop or use the rasp to loosen the soil - but every second counts as the ice is sublimating (evaporating) and pretty soon there won't be any ice left in the soil which would make the baking pointless.

Not only that but what is probably the last operational Tega oven is not really usable any more. The readings for any soil added to it will be effected by the soil that has been delivered this time and will have been sitting there slowly sublimating in the sun.

Oops - chalk up yet another cock-up for the Phoenix team.

Now what are they going to do with the extra 40 days that have been added to the life of the project (to make up for all the lost time due to all the previous cock-ups)?

I am still gobsmacked by how all these problems haven't been forseen by these rocket scientists. Weren't they expecting it to be cold? Didn't they try out the collection of icy hard soil in freezing low pressure conditions before sending Phoenix to Mars? Obviously not!!