Posted by tourdemars to Phoenix Lander at April 13, 2008 11:54 PM

NASA's next spacecraft to visit Mars has changed course to zero in on its red planet landing site. The Phoenix Mars Lander fired its thrusters for 35 seconds Thursday to fine-tune its heading for a planned May 25 landing near the Martian north pole. "This is our first trajectory maneuver targeting a specific location in the northern polar region of Mars," said Brian Portock, chief of NASA's Phoenix navigation team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in a statement. Phoenix's targeted drop zone is an area that mission scientists have dubbed "Green Valley." The region is a broad, flat valley where mission planners plan to land Phoenix somewhere within a 62-mile by 12-mile (100-km by 20-km) ellipse.