The Phoenix Mar’s lander is going to land on the polar cap of Mars to search frozen water for signs of life. As I write this, it is 2 hours, 1 minute away from touchdown at 7:53:33 EDT.
The last two landing on Mars has been done by inflating huge balloons and doing a bounce landing. Retro-thrust landings for non-manned spacecraft on Mars have been previously unsuccessful. This is going to be a retro-thrust landing so everybody has their fingers crossed hoping that everything will go all right.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/index.html to see how things are going.
The landing will be streamed on NASA TV here.
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