Paul's blog

Last year, on August 4th, I wrote, although not immediately apparent, about the launch of a Delta rocket that would put the Phoenix space craft on its way to Mars.

After having traveled some nine months at around 74,000 miles an hour, Phoenix is almost at the end of its 423 million mile journey:
Tomorrow afternoon it will make its landing attempt: when is starts its harrowing descent to the Martian surface it will be flying over 12,000 miles per hour (relative to Mars).
Seven minutes later it should be touching down on the cold rocky planet.

Unlike the previous rovers, this is not a big airbag that is dropped and bounces around for a while: this is a real lander that is supposed to make a controlled soft landing using a parachute, retro-rockets, radar, lots of computer power and … quite a bit of luck: so far, only 55% of all Mars landings have been successful.

Is the Phoenix team confident they will pull this off?
Not quite:

I do not feel confident. But in my heart I’m an optimist, and I think this is going to be a very successful mission,” said principal investigator Peter Smith, an optical scientist with the University of Arizona. “The thrill of victory is so much more exciting than the agony of defeat.

The number of things that can go wrong in the seven minutes it takes the lander from going from almost 13,000 mph to gently stepping on Mars’ surface is mind boggling. One single small failure will make the difference between success and Mars having yet another impact crater. This is why the Phoenix team refers to this landing event as “The Seven Minutes of Terror”.

I will be watching the landing coverage tomorrow on TV and it will be a nail biting experience.

And if we’re lucky and Phoenix survives this mission critical maneuver, we’re in for yet another nail biting experience.

After all, Phoenix’ mission is to hopefully find a conclusive answer to that centuries old question:

Is there life “out there”?