Syzdekistan

This afternoon, the Mars Phoenix Lander will land in the martian arctic to study martian water. The landing will be a harrowing one — due to the heavy lander and delicate instruments they will not be using the airbag landing that the rovers used a few years ago. Mars Phoenix lander will land completely autonomously using a parachute and rockets. NASA has a pretty cool video about the complexities of the landing. Since only about half of Mars missions have been successful, NASA is understandably nervous about the this phase of the mission. Landing is predicted to be at 4:38 PDT with signal reaching earth 15 minutes and 20 seconds later at about 4:53 PDT.

This blog has information on how to watch the landing (ok, you actually watch a bunch of engineers and planetary astronomers looking really tense in mission control and either breaking out in to cheers or a very awkward and concerned silence.) Also, if you are into Twitter, you can follow the Lander by following MarsPhoenix at Twitter. And for a very technical view of the mission, check out the excellent coverage at Spaceflight Now.