Cumbrian Sky

Yes, it's now just two weeks until Landing Day. Two weeks until the Phoenix probe sets down - hopefully - near the north pole of Mars and continues the quest to find life on the Red Planet that began with the Viking orbiters, back in those golden Sagan years of the mid-70s. I know, I know, Phoenix isn't actually looking for life itself, but the way I see it its experiments - to discover if the environment there was once hospitable for life - is part of the ongoing quest to discover life on Mars, and anything it tells us, good news or bad, will help us move towards finally finding an answer to that question.

NASA will soon begin holding regular pre-landing Phoenix briefings, and their web content will start building too. The wonderful people at JPL have now set up a Twitter page for Phoenix, where you can go and read regular - very brief! - updates on what's happening. It'll be fun to follow this Twitter page on landing night, flicking between it, other websites and NASA TV between 11pm and early morning our time...

|  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this