Since the time the NASA Phoenix has touched down the Mars’ northern Plain on May 25 (GMT), there have been many attempts made by the scientists to get the Martian soil in the onboard oven of the Phoenix for testing.

The Phoenix Lander had failed to get the Martian soil in one of its tiny Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer instrument ovens (TEGAS), last Friday. Scientists are now aiming at a new method, which they hope would be successful.

Scientists report that the Martian soil was too sticky and thus adhered to the scoop that was actually supposed to sprinkle it into the TEGA oven where it would have been analyzed. The scientists called the sample “Snow White” which was collected from a trench.

The robotic arm used its scoop tool to collect the sample after it had dug 6 holes in the soil. The Phoenix Lander has eight tiny ovens and the scoop was tilted above one of those. To sprinkle the dirt into the oven, a rasp tool was used. But the scientist later realized that the dirt which went into TEGA was eventually too less to make any tests.

Images, which were received by the centre on Sunday, cleared the fact that the soil collected during the attempt had fallen out of the scoop. So now scientists will collect the soil from a new method.

The news procedure which would be adopted by the scientists will involve less drilling as not to overheat the soil samples and scoop will also be shaken harder above the TEGA oven.

The main objective of this mission is to get at least a sample of the icy Martian soil, so that it could be analyzed in the TEGA oven. This analysis would help the scientists to know that whether life existed or was ever possible on the planet Mars.

Mr. Barry Goldstein, the mission's project manager from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California said, “We are going to modify the process we ran on Sol 60 to acquire another icy sample and attempt to deliver it to TEGA. We will repeat what we did successfully with small modifications to adjust for what we learned.”