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MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE Guy Webster 818-354-6278 Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726 Sara Hammond 520-626-1974 News Release: 2008-158 August 14, 2008 The particle -- shown at higher magnification than anything ever seen from another world -- is a rounded particle about one micrometer, or one millionth of a meter, across. It is a speck of the dust that cloaks Mars. Such dust particles color the Martian sky pink, feed storms that regularly envelop the planet and produce Mars' distinctive red soil. "This is the first picture of a clay-sized particle on Mars, and the size agrees with predictions from the colors seen in sunsets on the Red Planet," said "Taking this image required the highest resolution microscope operated off Earth and a specially designed substrate to hold the Martian dust," said Tom Pike, It took a very long time, roughly a dozen years, to develop the device that is operating in a polar region on a planet now about 350 million kilometers or 220 million miles away. The atomic force microscope maps the shape of particles in three dimensions by scanning them with a sharp tip at the end of a spring. During the scan, invisibly fine particles are held by a series of pits etched into a substrate microfabricated from a silicon wafer. Pike's group at The atomic force microscope can detail the shapes of particles as small as about 100 nanometers, about one one-thousandth the width of a human hair. That is about 100 times greater magnification than seen with "I'm delighted that this microscope is producing images that will help us understand Mars at the highest detail ever," Staufer said. "This is proof of the microscope's potential. We are now ready to start doing scientific experiments that will add a new dimension to measurements being made by other "After this first success, we're now working on building up a portrait gallery of the dust on Mars," Pike added. Mars' ultra-fine dust is the medium that actively links gases in the Martian atmosphere to processes in Martian soil, so it is critically important to understanding Mars' environment, the researchers said. The particle seen in the atomic force microscope image was part of a sample scooped by the robotic arm from the "Snow White" trench and delivered to The The latest -end-
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