Phoenix Arrives

NASA's Phoenix lander successfully landed softly in the north polar region of Mars yesterday. So far, the spacecraft is functioning well.

Phoenix has already begun sending images of its surroundings back to Earth. Those images will allow scientists to put later data in a geological context. That later data will come when the lander uses its one arm to dig into the soil and ice around it. The ultimate goal of the mission is to find evidence of life-- either extinct or extant-- on Mars. If that goal is achieved sometime in the 90 days of the projected mission, the universe as understood by humans will be fundamentally different-- filled with more possibilities-- before the World Series.