Exhilaration: Phoenix team members celebrate following the successful landing of the probe.
Credit: NASA
WASHINGTON DC: NASA's Phoenix spacecraft has successfully landed on Mars' frigid north pole region in a risk-fraught mission to search for signs of habitability.
"Phoenix has landed," a NASA official said as the safe touchdown was confirmed.
The Mars Phoenix Lander successfully deployed a parachute and then thrusters to brake in a tense seven minutes from 20,400 km/h to manage a soft landing on its three legs.
Hugs and high-fives
Mission officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, were seen on television cheering and giving each other hugs and high-fives after signals sent back from the craft confirmed the arrival of the first spacecraft ever to land on the Martian arctic.
The spacecraft is designed to help scientists assess whether the Martian arctic has ever had conditions favourable to microbial life.
Phoenix managed an almost perfect landing in a relatively rock-free, flat target area in the flat circumpolar region known as Vastitas Borealis – akin to northern Canada in Earth's latitude.
The team had been worried about the high risk of the project, with a roughly 50 per cent failure rate on all Mars missions since the Russians launched the first one in 1960.
Equipment deployment
"Frankly, this was by far the hardest part," said NASA's Barry Goldstein. "In my dreams it couldn't have gone as perfectly as it did tonight."
NASA will only know that the landing and deployment of Phoenix's equipment went well after pictures from the probe reach the Earth via NASA's Odyssey Mars orbiter, two hours after the landing.
The first pictures will be of the craft itself, to show NASA if all the equipment deployed in working order, and then, possibly shots of the surface.
Phoenix is equipped with a camera and a 2.35-metre robotic arm that can dig as deep as one metre to find ice, and can heat up samples to detect carbon and hydrogen molecules, essential elements of life.
Mars landing
Put aside all the Politics and politics,and Bullshit and feel the shear joy of doing something as fantastic as this.