NASA Press Conference: Phoenix Mars Lander

• "Mars Lander Team Prepares for "Seven Minutes of Terror""
  National Geographic (May 13, 2008)
  "After years of planning followed by a ten-month journey, the Mars Phoenix Lander is slated to touch down near the red planet's north pole on May 25.
  "If successful, the probe will be the first lander to reach a Martian pole and the first to actually touch the planet's water ice."
• "How NASA's Phoenix Will Land on Mars "
  Space.com (May 14, 2008)
  "NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander aims to not flame out when it descends to the arctic surface of the red planet in less than two weeks.
  "The new Martian probe will try to avoid the fate of its crashed predecessor, NASA's Mars Polar Lander, when deploying a parachute and braking rockets to slow its plunge and make a successful three-point landing.
  " 'This is not a trip to grandma's house,' said Ed Weiler, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C. 'Putting a spacecraft safely on Mars is hard and risky.' "

Both are pretty good, detailed, articles on the Phoenix Mars mission. I'll be very interested to see what happens, 11 days from now.

The Space.com article goes into more technical detail about what happened as the Mars Polar Lander attempted a landing, and what's been done to prevent a repeat of that crash.