NASA's Phoenix lander spacecraft should be touching down near the North pole of Mars in roughly 1 hour assuming it survives. After a 9 month journey to the Red Planet, it's now in the home stretch preparing for it's automated landing. Of course, it takes nearly 15 minutes to send a signal from Mars back to Earth, and the entire entry, descent and landing phase only takes 7 minutes. This means it will land (or crash) before we even know it has entered the Martian atmosphere. And this isn't one of those bouncy-bouncy landings like the Mars rovers did. This one is using a unique thruster arrangment to put her down that gives them only one shot. And did I mention the spacecraft is the driver, not a human? Anyway, good luck to NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on this historic evening. I'm crossing my fingers.
P.S. Look out for evil Martians little lander guy!
WATCH THE PHOENIX MARS LANDING LIVE RIGHT HERE
We'll keep you posted here at PointNiner on the results of this landing.
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