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."

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.

Several crucial devices aboard NASA's Mars-bound Phoenix lander have passed in-flight testing. Mission managers remotely inspected Phoenix's descent-monitoring radar as well as its UHF radio, which will communicate with Mars satellites after it reaches the red planet's surface on May 25, 2008. The instruments passed all tests with flying colors as the craft zooms through space at 76,000 mph (34 kilometers per second). "Everything is going as planned. No surprises, but this is one of those times when boring is good," said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander lit up the predawn Florida sky Saturday, launching spaceward on a mission to determine whether the planet could have once supported primitive life. A United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket launched Phoenix towards Mars at 5:26:34 a.m. EDT (0926:34 GMT) from Pad 17A at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The three-stage booster is bound for the flat northern plains of Vastitas Borealis near the martian north pole, where it is expected to dig into and sample the region's icy soil with its eight-foot (2.4-meter) robotic arm. "It's a wonderful morning to go to Mars," NASA's Phoenix project manager Barry Goldstein, of the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), just before liftoff. As predicted, weather conditions were pristine for the early morning space shot. The launch was delayed 24 hours earlier this week due to bad weather during rocket fueling. Just after the supersonic crackle of the launch, Phoenix officials let out gasps of excitement as the rocket careened toward Mars.

At the Phoenix prelaunch news conference, NASA's Launch Director Chuck Dovale said the launch team is ready to go for Saturday's early morning liftoff. Weather Officer Joel Tumbiolo reports favorable conditions for launch time, with only a 20 percent chance of weather preventing liftoff. The forecast calls for scattered clouds, light ground and upper-level winds, and good visibility. The launch preparations got back on track after a one-day delay because of severe weather in the vicinity of the launch pad on Tuesday that prevented the Delta II launch team from completing the fueling of the rocket's second stage. The Phoenix Mars lander's assignment is to dig through the Martian soil and ice in the arctic region and use its onboard scientific instruments to analyze the samples it retrieves.

Only a few days remain to fly your name - or those of family members and friends - to Mars. This summer, The Planetary Society will send a DVD containing the names of individuals from around the world to Mars aboard NASA's first Scout mission, Phoenix. Once a name is entered on The Planetary Society website, a certificate can be downloaded, stating the name's inclusion on the archival message from Earth to Mars. So far, about 200,000 people from more than 70 countries have signed up to send their names. The deadline for submitting names has just been extended to February 12, 2007 at Noon, Pacific time. People everywhere are encouraged to submit names to fly to Mars, including those of children and grandchildren, classmates, or even a favorite family pet. The disk will also include "Visions of Mars," a collection of 19th and 20th century stories and art by some of Earth's visionaries.

Scientists are scrambling to find an alternative landing site for a long-armed robot set to launch this summer on a mission to dig into Mars' icy north pole to search for signs of primitive life. The original landing spot was nixed after images beamed back by the eagle-eyed Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter unexpectedly showed scores of bus-sized boulders littered over old crater rims on flat plains. The gigantic rocks pose a danger to NASA's Phoenix Mars lander, which unlike the rolling twin rovers, will be stationary, mission principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona said during a news teleconference Thursday.

NASA engineer Barry Goldstein said he's "scared to death" about the Colorado-built Phoenix Mars Lander, and everybody else on the mission should be, too. "You've got to be constantly scared to death and have the perspective that there are flaws in the system," Goldstein said Thursday, while standing alongside the solar-powered Phoenix lander in a clean room at Lockheed Martin Space Systems southwest of Denver in Jefferson County. "That doesn't mean that there are flaws, but you have to constantly be hunting to find them if they are there," said Goldstein, NASA's Phoenix project manager.

NASA’s next mission to Mars—the Phoenix lander—is undergoing readiness testing in preparation for an early August launch window. For the first time since NASA’s Viking missions in the 1970’s, the plan calls for Phoenix to safely settle down on Mars using a set of onboard rocket thrusters—no airbags this time as successfully used by NASA’s last three red planet landings. When Phoenix touches down within the northern polar plains of Mars, it will be ready for research duties. This stationary probe is armed with a robotic scoop to dig and scratch into the martian surface for answers regarding the history of water on Mars and the planet’s potential as an extraterrestrial address for life.

NASA's next mission to the red planet—the Phoenix Mars Lander—is a true wedding of technology with planetary exploration: Something old, something new…something borrowed and something blue. Named after the resilient mythological bird, Phoenix is based upon a lander that was meant to fly in 2001, but administratively mothballed by NASA. It is also outfitted with instruments that are improved variations of gear carried onboard the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander. That vehicle went astray on touchdown nearly seven years ago, a breakdown of managerial and engineering matters—sadly setting off blues for a red planet. Today, the flight of the Phoenix is a different story.

NASA's next mission to the Red Planet, the Phoenix Mars Lander, is coming together in preparation for its August 2007 launch. Engineers are now incorporating many of its subsystems, including the flight computer, power systems and science instruments. If all goes well, the spacecraft will land near Mars' north polar ice cap, and analyze samples that it scoops up from the icy soil.

The next Mars lander is undergoing assembly and testing, being readied for departure next year to explore the martian arctic. This probe is equipped to dig deep, quite literally, into an ongoing mystery—the history of water on Mars and the planet’s potential as an extraterrestrial address for life. NASA’s Phoenix Mars mission is the first in the space agency’s Scout series, a class of spacecraft designed to be inventive but relatively low-cost in furthering Mars exploration.

Canadian innovation will be the main scout in NASA's next lander mission to Mars. A Canadian-designed weather station will play a lead role in answering questions about the planet's geology and climate. "We are now just learning that those environments, to our great surprise, do support microbes," said Victoria Hipkin, a planetary scientist at the Canadian Space Agency.

NASA has given the green light to a project to put a long-armed lander on to the icy ground of the far-northern Martian plains. NASA's Phoenix lander is designed to examine the site for potential habitats for water ice, and to look for possible indicators of life, past or present. Today's announcement allows the Phoenix mission to proceed with preparing the spacecraft for launch in August 2007. This major milestone followed a critical review of the project's planning progress and preliminary design, since its selection in 2003.

If all goes right, in June 2008, a small piece of the Palouse will be stabbing into the northern polar ice cap of Mars. Pullman-based Decagon Devices Inc., founded in 1983 by former WSU soil scientist Gaylon Campbell, has 44 employees researching, creating and marketing products that have applications in foods, pharmaceuticals, biology, forestry, soil sciences, and now, researching Mars. The Phoenix Lander is planned to land May 2008 in the northern polar region of Mars, and expose the upper few feet of surface material using a robotic arm to find the ice discovered by the Odyssey mission in 2002.