So, as NASA is always doing awesome things, I wanted to explain about their recent successful landing on Mars of the Phoenix Lander. This robot was launched on August 4, 2007 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The goal of the mission is to find any evidence of water and to see if there is a “habitable zone” in the ice and soil of Mars.

The Phoenix itself is a static (non-moving) robot with a robotic arm, a bunch of cameras, a gas analyzer, and a microscopy, electrochemistry, and conductivity analyzer. These together are the tools to find signs of a place where live could have existed on Mars.

The Launch of the Phoenix Robot on a Delta 7925 on Launch Pad 17-A

An Artist’s Rendition of the Phoenix landing on Mars

What is cool about this particular Mars robot is that the mission is more “Web 2.0″ like. The mission has many cool videos, a Twitter feed (yes, that thing where you say what you are doing), and obviously a website and blog. But nonetheless, it goes to show how quickly new things catch on. You can check out their site at http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/ and the Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix. The NASA site about it is at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/index.html. There are also a bunch of videos on the Phoenix Mars mission at http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/videos.php#edl_hud

On board the Phoenix is also a mini-DVD. On the DVD is content for future Martian explorers with sci-fi stories, art about Mars, and names of more than a quarter million people on Earth.

This mission is the first robot in the polar region of Mars, the sixth landing on Mars, and the third successful static lander on Mars. And obviously, NASA has much more planned for the future.