It's Almost Time for the Mars Phoenix Landing

Written by Fraser Cain

You probably already forgot, but NASA has a spacecraft heading to Mars right now. The Phoenix Mars Lander has been traveling for almost 10 months, and it's going to be landing on the surface of Mars in just a few days. Mark your calendar for May 25, 2008. it's going to be an exciting day.

If everything goes according to plan, the NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander will enter the Martian atmosphere traveling 21,000 km/hour (13,000 mph). It must then slow itself down using a variety of techniques (aerobraking, parachutes and retro-rockets), so that it can softly touch down on the surface of Mars.

Assuming the spacecraft isn't somehow destroyed during the descent (like what happened to the Mars Polar Lander), the first signals could come back from the Mars Phoenix Lander as early as 2353 UTC (7:53 p.m. EDT).

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