For a beleaguered team working on one of the UA-led Phoenix Mars lander’s premier experiments, the seventh time was the charm. After soil delivered from Mars’ arctic surface clogged up a screen above a key instrument, delaying a planned analysis of the soil for several days, scientists and engineers tried one last time to shake some dirt into a tiny experimental oven. They’d tried the same thing six times, but each time the dirt failed to fall into an opening in the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer, or TEGA.
