Let's get to Mars - only 46 years to go.

A Survival Imperative for Space Colonization
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: July 17, 2007
J. Richard Gott III has issued a wake-up call: To ensure our long-term survival, we need to get a colony up and running on Mars within 46 years.

Back to MARS!

NASA officials said Monday that they were ready to send Phoenix Mars Lander to the northern region of the Red Planet. Plans call for launching the craft from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a Delta II rocket during a three-week window that opens on Aug. 3.

After taking almost 10 months to reach Mars, the spacecraft is to make a fiery entry into the atmosphere before being slowed by a parachute and eventually landing with the help of a series of pulsing retro rockets.

“Phoenix is going to a completely new area,” Peter H. Smith of the University of Arizona, the mission’s principal scientist, said during a news briefing at NASA headquarters.