Bad Astronomy

Phoenix has landed!

Woohoo!

Right now there’s not much to add to that. :-) Everything looks like it worked perfectly, and now we have a new laboratory on Mars. The Arizona Phoenix mission page is running a little slow, but you an get up-to-date info there. Basically, the lander will run through a series of checks for a while, to make sure everything is OK.

I’ll add that the live coverage I watched was very cool. It’s really great to see so many people who have spent so much time have their hopes and dreams come true as we watch. Especially since Phoenix was aptly named; it was designed after the Mars Polar Lander, which was lost for reasons which are still not completely known. But Phoenix was tested, and retested, and retested again, and it’s clear that paid off.

Now, we wait. Soon enough, Phoenix will do what it was sent to the Martian north polar region to do: look around and test its environment to see if conditions there are right for life, or ever were.

More on that as it develops!

Edited to add: Emily has tons of details, so head over there for more info.