About 6 HRS.+ and we will have a burned up lander or a mission success. CNN will have live coverage starting at 7 PM. Opps meant to place this in the Topic above this. [cnredd]Moved it up to Science[/cnredd]

NASA Site: NASA - Phoenix

This site has mny links in the story.

Phoenix Lander Takes Aim at Martian Arctic : SPACE.com -- Phoenix Lander Takes Aim at Martian Arctic

By Tariq Malik
Senior Editor
posted: 01 May 2008
07:00 am ET


NASA's Mars-bound Phoenix spacecraft is gearing up for a landmark landing near the martian north pole this month to find out whether the region could have once supported microbial life.

Phoenix is on course for a planned May 25 touchdown in the martian arctic that, if successful, will mark the first powered landing on Mars since NASA's hefty Viking 2 lander set down in 1976. But first, the probe is expected to fire its thrusters several times in the next few weeks to fine-tune its flight path.

"It's scary how smooth it's been," said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "The vehicle has just been behaving beautifully."

The Phoenix lander tweaked its course in early April and is scheduled to fire its thrusters in three successive Saturday maneuvers beginning May 10. The spacecraft has flown so accurately that one of the maneuvers may not be necessary, Goldstein said.

Launched in August 2007, Phoenix is a stationary lander equipped with a trench-digging robotic arm to bite into the martian surface and scoop up samples of nearby soil and water ice. The probe's top-mounted suite of ovens and wet chemistry instruments are designed to help determine whether its arctic plain landing site - a region similar in latitude to central Greenland or northern Alaska on Earth - could have once proven habitable for primitive life.