Phoenix Has Landed!

Cheers erupted from crowds gathered on the mall of the UA campus as NASA received a signal from the Phoenix Mars lander indicating it had touched down on Mars late Sunday afternoon. Throughout the day, the Red Planet's gravity pulled in Phoenix, which reached an acceleration of more than 12,000 mph before breaking into the Mars atmosphere and speeding towards the final seven minutes of descent, a sequence involving deploying and jettisoning parachutes and finally firing thrusters to land. Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory now await confirmation that the solar arrays have deployed, the next step in the quest to photograph Mars and sample its soils. NASA reports that the first images could come later tonight.