By DPA,
Washington : NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander landed successfully on the red planet, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory learned late Sunday.
Confirmation of the landing took more than 15 minutes to be transmitted from the robotic probe, due to the time needed for radio signals to reach Earth from Mars.
Earlier in the day, Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona had said that Mars was literally pulling on our spacecraft, and at the same time it was pulling on our emotions.
“We are excited at how close we are right now to beginning our study of a site where Martian water ice will be within our reach, after all these years of preparations. Our science mission begins as the spacecraft settles into its new home on Mars,” he said.
Mission controllers reported that no last-minute adjustments to the spacecraft’s trajectory were necessary because the probe was on course.