After traveling about 680 million km through space, the space probe Phoenix has finally landed on the planet mars. Launched on the 4th of August 2007 from NASA, the probe will have to study the samples of water from the permafrost layer situated i the arctic area of Mars, in order to find out if life is possible on this planet.

When the Phoenix was 1800 km away from its destination, the breaking chute opened automatically, being followed by the ignition of the 12 rockets designed to slow the probe down from 20.000 km to 8km/h. 14 minutes before landing on Martian soil, Phoenix initialized the equipments which it will use to investigate the surface.

The probe entered the atmosphere 7 minutes before landing, and this event was accompanied by a huge amount of heat.

The body of the probe was protected by the thermal shield, and the temperatures reached about 1000 degrees Celsius. After it landed on Mars, the probe opened up two parraboloc antennas, which will enable it to power its generators until the Mars winter, which will come in three months.

The first radio signal, which traveled with the speed of light, confirmed that the landing took place without any problems. The signal traveled over 270 million km to reach Earth in about 15 minutes.