After pulling off a long-shot landing on Mars on Sunday night, the team behind the Phoenix mission will spend the next few days making sure its equipment is ready to begin searching for the raw ingredients necessary to support life on the planet. The landing of NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft marked the first time in 32 years that the space agency has delivered a probe on the Red Planet using retrorockets. The rover vehicles Spirit and Opportunity landed with the help of air bags. The Phoenix lander then began transmitting images of the barren surface of Mars’ northern latitudes.
