Touchdown! Phoenix lands on Mars
Lander begins search for habitability
By Ron Cowen
Planetary scientists Sunday night unveiled the first close-up color images of the northern arctic circle on Mars. The images were taken by the Mars Phoenix Lander only a few hours after its flawless descent onto the Red Planet’s northern plains at 7:38 p.m. EDT, May 25.
The images show a flat valley, devoid of rocks. “I know it looks a little like a parking lot, but that’s a safe place to land, by gosh,” said Phoenix project scientist Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson. “That makes it exactly the place we want to be. Underneath this surface, I guarantee you there’s ice.”
The region, he added, is “surprisingly close to what we expected — that’s what surprised me the most.”