However, this time it looks very true.
Just as NASA announced the extension of the Phoenix Mars mission by five weeks, its scientists disclosed that they finally got the first Martian ice sample into one of the analysis ovens onboard the Lander.
NASA scientists earlier this week had decided to temporarily bypass the ice test because they had repeatedly run into trouble trying to get ice samples into the test ovens for analysis. The ice simply kept sticking to the back of the scoop on the robotic arm.
So on Wednesday engineers and programmers sent the robotic arm new instructions to gather a dry soil sample and get that into the ovens while they tried to solve the ice delivery problem. As chance would have it, when they got the soil into the oven, they discovered that it contained a small amount of ice, so they actually got exactly what they wanted.
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