NASA’s latest Mars explorer, Phoenix, is set to land on the Red Planet tonight at just before 8:00 PM Eastern. There will be live coverage on the NASA TV web site starting at 6:00 PM Eastern.
Phoenix is being sent to Mars’ north pole to search for what appears to be subsurface liquid water. According to the mission overview, the four main goals are;
– Determine whether Life ever arose on Mars
– Characterize the Climate of Mars
– Characterize the Geology of Mars
– Prepare for Human Exploration“The Phoenix Mission has two bold objectives to support these goals, which are to (1) study the history of water in the Martian arctic and (2) search for evidence of a habitable zone and assess the biological potential of the ice-soil boundary.”
NASA’s live broadcast runs from 6:00 -11:00 tonight. Here’s the link. If you get the Science Channel as part of your cable package, you can watch it there too. Coverage for that begins at 7:00 Eastern.
I see we have recycled the name Phoenix, for a lander. Had one of those already on the Moon. Just in case we are planning to someday have a manned mission, might try using a more appropriate flying name, like Cathetel, “Angel of the Garden.” Hey, we could engineer the planet to make it habitable, a veritable Garden, and a backup place to go to if we happen to completely damage the earth.