NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander is on the Red Planet’s surface. Touchdown was confirmed shortly before 7:00 (CDT) Sunday evening, with the first photos from the probe expected to be received within hours.

The spacecraft took about eight minutes to land after entering the Martian atmosphere.

Hours before the anticipated landing, Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith, of the University of Arizona, Tucson said, “We are excited at how close we are right now to beginning our study of a site where Martian water ice will be within our reach, after all these years of preparations. Our science mission begins as the spacecraft settles into its new home on Mars.”

Image above caption:

NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander will open its solar arrays 20 minutes after it touches down on the surface of Mars. This ensures that any dust kicked up during the landing will not settle in on the arrays.

This artist’s illustration is part of an animation that can be found here.

The Phoenix Mission is led by the University of Arizona, Tucson, on behalf of NASA. Project management of the mission is by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Spacecraft development is by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Touchdown was deemed the most challenging part of the entire mission, getting from the top of the atmosphere to a safe landing on three legs. Internationally, only five of the 11 attempts to land a spacecraft on Mars have succeeded.

The Phoenix mission is led by Smith, with project management at JPL. The development partnership is with Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions are from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; the Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

For more about the Phoenix mission on the Web, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix.