LOS ANGELES, June 4 (Reuters) - The Phoenix Mars lander has been instructed to scoop up and analyze its first samples from the planet's polar region to help determine if conditions were ever suitable for life, mission scientists said on Wednesday.
The NASA lander, which touched down on Mars on May 25, was set to use its robotic arm on Wednesday to take surface soil samples from three sites and place them in instruments to test their composition.
Initial tests by the robotic arm scoop have uncovered a 1.5-inch-(4-cm-)deep layer near the landing site that intrigues NASA officials.
"It could be salt or it may be the ice layer we are looking for," Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith told a news conference.
Mission scientists hope to "get one of those samples and get it into our instruments and find out what it is," Smith said.
Phoenix's robotic camera has sent back images of what appears to be exposed ice under the lander. But Smith said that area -- dubbed "Snow Queen" -- cannot be analyzed because it is out of the reach of the scoop.
The $420-million craft touched down on the arctic circle of Mars after a 10-month, 420 million-mile (680-million-km) journey from Earth.
NASA has searched Mars for the past decade for signs of water and conditions that might have supported life. It has used a fleet of orbiters and a pair of rovers on the planet.
The detection of subsurface water on Mars in 2002 by the Odyssey spacecraft prompted the Phoenix mission.
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