Posted by jburk to Phoenix Lander at May 25, 2008 05:08 PM

NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander survived its fiery plunge through the Red Planet's atmosphere in Sunday and made a bull’s-eye touchdown near its north pole. The robotic craft, designed to dig into the icy soil to determine if the permafrost could have supported primitive life, landed as planned at 7:38 p.m. ET Sunday under a sunny Martian sky. It took another 15 minutes for the radio signals confirming the safe landing to travel the 170 million miles (270 million kilometers) from Mars to Earth.