Mars Phoenix lander to touch down on the red planet tonight

Suit up, space nerds, because the Phoenix lander is mere hours away from touchdown on Mars, and NASA's blowing this thing out. Not only will you get a live video feed from their site, but apparently Mission Control ops will be liveblogging the touchdown and ensuing alien encounters / totally boring rock digging. Festivities kick off at about 6:00pm ET, prepare to set faces to stunned.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Read - Phoenix mission page
Read - NASA live video feed
Read - NASA Mission Control liveblog

[Mills @ May 25th 2008 4:42PM]

there is also a live event show about it on discovery science. it starts at 7 eastern time and 6 central. its suppose to have lots of live footage.

[Jherez @ May 25th 2008 7:40PM]

Encounters Ryan, not "encouners"

[roro2210 @ May 25th 2008 7:56PM]

touchdown well done nasa

[Rafer @ May 25th 2008 7:57PM]

Giddy as schoolboys.

[Mills @ May 25th 2008 8:13PM]

EPIC SUCCESS

[Richard Lai @ May 25th 2008 8:30PM]

Yep, the Phoenix has landed.

[X-BLADE @ May 25th 2008 4:53PM]

I welcome my alien-enthusiast overlords:

[Rafer @ May 25th 2008 6:49PM]

come on Ice Alien Yetis.

[Tom Oliveri @ May 25th 2008 7:31PM]

gotta give it to the guy that replied, he's spot on.

[Robert Baker @ May 25th 2008 5:10PM]

Science Channel HD and CNN will also be hosting live shows/feeds starting at 7:00pm ET

[Darkroom @ May 25th 2008 5:12PM]

could it crash?

[Bunson @ May 25th 2008 5:37PM]

lawl... there goes several million dollars.

[CraigJ @ May 25th 2008 5:44PM]

Sure. any number of components could fail, it could land on a boulder and wreck itself, or aliens could shoot it down.

Unfortunately if it crashes we won't be able to see it.

[Maestro @ May 25th 2008 6:15PM]

I would say the chances of it crashes are better than 50%. There is probably a reason NASA abandoned retro-rocket landings on other planets. It's like shotting a bullet from NY to Los Angeles and hitting your target.

That being said, I sure am pulling for this to have a successful landing.

[Darkroom @ May 25th 2008 6:22PM]

maybe if NASA wants to do a live broadcast of their events they could make the "pre-show" a bit less of an ULTRA YAWN... those blue shirts look nice and all, but i'm falling asleep here.

[Darkroom @ May 25th 2008 6:34PM]

oh nevermind... i guess that was the pre-pre-show... the real pre-show is actually informative...

[Chris Macdonald @ May 25th 2008 9:24PM]

nope!

[ethana2 @ May 26th 2008 12:58AM]

They'll call it 'the red screen of death'.

[Jiten Dajee @ May 25th 2008 5:20PM]

its gonna get bombed

[Kaiser @ May 25th 2008 5:23PM]

Exciting!

[fred @ May 25th 2008 6:33PM]

After Spirit and Pathfinder(?) this just seems so unambitious. Millions of dollars just to stand still is so Viking Lander.

Btw, why on Earth (no pun) have we never put a full motion camera on one of these things? NASA could reap millions from an IMAX movie of a real trip across Mars in 3D

[Sma @ May 26th 2008 8:46AM]

@Fred I think its partly to do with bandwidth/the distance the signal goes to get here. Also as I understand it, in this case(maybe the 2 latest rovers as well) they don't have enough power to transmit a signal all the way to earth, atleast not one that is strong enough to get data from. They transmit from mars to orbiters that then relay the signal back to earth. I would also assume that its because they'd rather pack on as much scientific devices as they could, rather than full motion video equipment. The difference between this one, and two resent rovers is that it has its 7foot arm thats going to dig, and see whats in/under the soil. It may not be very exciting, until they find some sorta bacteria, or even fossils, although to some thats not very exciting either, but to each their own. :)

[Josh @ May 25th 2008 5:37PM]

Live DOOOOOOOOOOOOM

sorry, i had to...

I have been a bit bummed about space exploration lately though, seems like we haven't been out and about the galaxy as much as previously, definitely not the best of plans but americans dont seem willing to dump more money into a broken bureaucracy.

Definitely excited about the manned mission to mars and the space station on the moon venture, hope they are actually accomplished on time!

[Bunson @ May 25th 2008 5:37PM]

Sweet Action.

[Richard Lai @ May 25th 2008 5:42PM]

Don't forget the Decepticons.

[Joe Commisso @ May 25th 2008 5:37PM]

We should travel to Mars II. Hidden behind Mars I. There are millions of undiscovered creatures there ready to reek some havoc!

[Richard Lai @ May 25th 2008 5:41PM]

The thing I don't get is how come they didn't put wheels on Phoenix? Are they not planning to use it for a long period? It's going to be just sat there in one spot. :(

And if it lands on the wrong spot, it'll be stuck there forever...

[Xee @ May 25th 2008 5:55PM]

The "life" of this lander is only supposed to be a few months. After that, the Martian winter will hit it, blocking out the sun and slowly burying it under carbon dioxide frost.

[Richard Lai @ May 25th 2008 6:02PM]

So much effort for so little fun... :(

[Chris Macdonald @ May 25th 2008 9:25PM]

I'm sure if the scientists at NASA who've been working on this for several years would have put wheels on if they wanted to.

[MichaelD @ May 25th 2008 11:11PM]

I don't know about you, but if I were a Martian, I'd be pretty excited when, as I shoveled my driveway, I found a multi-million dollar machine someone just left behind.

[shravan @ May 26th 2008 6:29AM]

I like the way Xee put it, "The "life" of this lander is only supposed to be a few months. After that, the Martian winter will hit it, blocking out the sun and slowly burying it under carbon dioxide frost." It really sounds as though humanity has come a long way. From making stone wheels to putting an explorer on Mars only to blocked out by the same ol' CO2 we're fighting here.

[Parsec @ May 25th 2008 6:08PM]

"boring rock digging".

It's all boring until the rock digging turns up living extraterrestrial life-forms.

[Garrett @ May 25th 2008 6:15PM]

I'm in

[Maestro @ May 25th 2008 6:17PM]

I'm OK with no wheels. Some mission don't call for mobility. What I would love to see (hear) is an always on microphone than be accessed from a web browser...It would be cool to hear the silence and this thing whirring away.

[chymchym @ May 25th 2008 6:26PM]

Everytime I try to load the live video feed in either FF or IE it crashes. Nice!

[Mills @ May 25th 2008 6:26PM]

heard on CNN yesterday that this only has a 53% chance of landing successfully. we'll see...

[James Cameron @ May 25th 2008 6:58PM]

Maybe the Martians doesn't want any successful landing.

[applefan @ May 25th 2008 6:59PM]

Well I heard on CNN yesterday that 73.59 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.

[Xee @ May 25th 2008 7:04PM]

And I heard that the other 26.41 percent of statistics are true 50 percent of the time.

[Abuzar @ May 25th 2008 7:17PM]

I don't watch CNN.

[Maxime Rousseau @ May 25th 2008 6:43PM]

I like it how they put ET instead of EST as a reference for eastern time.

[ED @ May 25th 2008 7:01PM]

*groans at awful 'set faces to stunned' pun*

[catachip @ May 25th 2008 7:28PM]

I watched this launch last summer while working at the Kennedy Space Center. After traveling for 9 months at 20,000 km/hr it's about to land. Amazing! Let's home it makes it and we get some awesome pictures in the next hour or so.

[Tom Oliveri @ May 25th 2008 7:31PM]

by the time we actualy get a HUMAN to mars the robots will already controll the damn planet.

why cant we send some robots to the moon? i hear its made of cheese, someone should probaby check that out.

[Magallanes @ May 25th 2008 8:02PM]

government cheese?

[TheGeektoriousBIG @ May 25th 2008 8:14PM]

Yum Yum Give Me Some!

[Ike Turner @ May 25th 2008 7:58PM]

TouchDOWN!!!!

[Xee @ May 25th 2008 8:09PM]

Now just a few more hours until the first pictures! :)

[aardvark sandwich @ May 25th 2008 8:24PM]

So thats where my taxes went. Another planet.

......sigh.....