Last week we announced you that the small spacecraft called the Phoenix Mars Lander is scheduled to land on Mars this month, 25 May. More news about the mission is being revealed just as we spoke and one of the new things we found is that there are a number of rovers and spacecrafts that were sent before in this region of Mars but failed to land and were destroyed in the process.

At one of the failed missions in 1999 the team voted to recycle the lost equipment and learn what they could improve. In order to land they first had to find a good landing spot which was not so hard. The area from which they want to extract ice is a shallow valley of 213 meters deep and 64 km long.

The team got lucky with a crater near the valley caused by a meteorite which pushed all the large rocks in the area leaving a "smooth landing pad" but as NASA's associate administrator for Science Mission Directorate Ed Weiler said "Mars has been known to cause trouble, and I'll be worried until I hear the signal a few seconds after landing. This is not a trip to grandma's for the weekend" so we expect a bumpy ride.

The hardest part which the team fears the most and where they lost the other spacecrafts is the "14 minutes before touchdown" when Phoenix will separate from it's cruise mode and will interrupt all communication with NASA. Once it reaches Mars atmosphere the "entry", "descent" and "land" (EDL) phase will begin.

First it will have to open a parachute to stop it's 20,270 km per hour mad speed and glide for 3 minutes until is 113 km below. After that, the landing thrusters will take over and the legs will expand.

"There are 14 pyrotechnic events, and each of those have to work perfectly for this to go as planned" , Goldstein said. Getting EDL communication "at touchdown" - that will be the three seconds that I am really biting my nails over.