$400 Million Mars Lander to Launch on Saturday

After a brief delay, NASA will launch the Phoenix Mars lander from Cape Canaveral early on Saturday in search of water on the red planet.

Its destination is the Martian north pole, where after landing it will extend a 7-foot-long robotic arm and dig beneath the surface through, according to the Los Angeles Times:

... a layer of ice thought to lie just beneath the surface. If the ice is as hard as some scientists suspect — think concrete — Phoenix will use a tungsten carbide drill to bore into it.

(Fantastic artist's renditions after the jump.)

The soil and ice will be analyzed by the most sophisticated suite of scientific instruments ever sent to the surface of another world. The instruments will scan, magnify and cook the compounds, finally sending them through a mass spectrometer to identify their parts.

"The Holy Grail would be to find organics," said Barry Goldstein, the project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada
Flintridge. "That would be a major splash."

The story notes that while NASA isn't known for it's sense of humor, the name Phoenix evokes the memory of the failed 1999 Mars Polar Lander mission. The Phoenix won't touch down until April, when sophisticated drilling and ice-melting equipment will take samples and send the through a mass spectronomer to find out what they're made of.

In this artist's rendition, the Phoenix is hurtling towards Mars at 16,000 mile per hour and is minutes away from entering the atmosphere.

The artist's renditions were created by Corby Waste of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Since the Phoenix runs on solar panels, it will shut down for winter on Mars, when there's no sunlight.