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Emily Lakdawalla • Oct 09, 2008

Catching up with Phoenix to sol 133: Digging at La Mancha, grabbing Galloping Hessians from Pet Donkey

Don't blame me for the names. I'm just the messenger. There's been a fury of digging lately on Phoenix, and that means a flurry of new names to figure out. When I last mapped out the work volume (the area within reach of the robotic arm), this is what it looked like:

The Phoenix 'work volume' as of sol 96

NASA / JPL / UA / Texas A & M / mosaic by James Canvin / map by Emily Lakdawalla

The Phoenix 'work volume' as of sol 96
Pink text indicates the approximate locations of samples delivered to MECA, and green text indicates samples delivered to TEGA. Small gray text indicates named rocks. The base panorama consists of images captured on sol 84.
Panorama across the Phoenix work volume, sol 131

NASA / JPL / UA / Texas A & M

Panorama across the Phoenix work volume, sol 131
Phoenix took this six-image panorama across the upper part of its work volume on sol 131. It documents the locations of two new trenches, in the center of the work volume, named La Mancha and Pet Donkey. Other relatively recent changes are a new dump pile, Bee Tree, to the right of center at the top. Between Bee Tree and Croquet Grounds (the dump pile at extreme right) is a new divot in the soil, where the sample called Rosy Red N was collected.
The Phoenix 'work volume' as of sol 130

The Phoenix 'work volume' as of sol 130
Pink text indicates the approximate locations of samples delivered to MECA's Wet Chemistry Laboratory (WCL); yellow text, samples delivered to the Optical Microscope (OM); and green text indicates samples delivered to TEGA. Small gray text indicates named rocks and dump piles. The base panorama consists of images captured on sol 84.

The deliveries happened according to the following schedule
ol 12: Baby Bear to TEGA 4 (in oven sol 16)
ol 17: Mama Bear to OM
ol 26: Rosy Red to OM
ol 30: Rosy Red to WCL 0
ol 38: Sorceress to OM
ol 41: Sorceress to WCL 1
ol 64: Wicked Witch to TEGA 0
ol 67: Mother Goose to OM
ol 72: Rosy Red 3 to TEGA 5
ol 75: Wicked Witch to OM
ol 85: Burning Coals to TEGA 7
ol 96: Golden Goose to WCL 3
ol 99: Golden Key to OM
ol 101: Golden Goose to OM
ol 102: Golden Goose to WCL 3 (2nd attempt)
ol 107: Sorceress to WCL 2
ol 110: Golden Goose to OM
ol 113: ??? to TEG
ol 120: Sam McGee to TEGA 1
ol 126: Wicked Witch 2 to TEGA 1
ol 128: Galloping Hessian to OM
ol 131: Rosy Red N to TEGA 6

Check out the Robotic Arm Camera raw images page; there's lots of new images there, including several attempts to record dust devil movies (I didn't have time to check if they were successful in catching any on camera). And the sol-by-sol summary is now up-to-date as of sol 133.

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