Photograph transmitted Sunday from Phoenix probe shows possible life on Mars

A photograph of Phoenix shortly after landing - click to enlarge

NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander touched down safely Sunday on the Red Planet. The Mars probe will soon begin to sift through the icy soil for any signs of present or former life.

"We've passed the hardest part and we're breathing again,'' Mars Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein said in a statement released by NASA. Mars' rugged terrain and equipment failures have previously led to the failure of more than half of all Mars missions, including an ancestor of the Phoenix lander that was destroyed in 1999.

Phoenix sent a signal confirming it had safely landed in the northern polar region of Mars, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said on its website. The message took 15 minutes to travel to Earth from Mars at the speed of light.

As Phoenix began transmitting pictures to earth, scientists were shocked by the first images they received. Even before Phoenix began its probes in the soil, it broadcast back photographs that stunned the scientists on the Phoenix project at NASA. The photograph seems to show what earthlings might describe as a Yeti, or northwest-variety Sasquatch, striding across the Martian terrain. Scientists are at a loss to explain the photo, and anxiously await the next series of photographs, due to be transmitted later today. A website on the Internet, called Life on Mars obtained and posted one of the first photographs received by NASA, apparently leaked from the mission center. The photograph as it originally appeared today is located here.

click to enlarge (original 640 x 480 pixels)

---o0o---