CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Aug. 3 (UPI) -- NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is preparing for launch Saturday from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a voyage to Mars.
The robotic explorer, which is equipped to dig up and analyze icy soil on Mars, was scheduled to liftoff early Saturday, NASA said Friday in a release.
A Delta II launch vehicle will carry the Phoenix Mars Lander into Earth orbit and then give a push to send it to Mars, with an expected landing of May 25, 2008.
Phoenix will travel 422 million miles in an outward arc from Earth to Mars to determine whether icy soil on far northern Mars has conditions that have ever been suitable for life.
Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson said instruments on Phoenix are "specially designed to find evidence for periodic melting of the ice and to assess whether this large region represents a habitable environment for Martian microbes."
