The US space agency (Nasa) has announced plans for yet another mission to land on Mars. It has selected a proposal for a craft called Phoenix to touch down in the high northern latitudes of the Red Planet to study the water-ice thought to lurk just beneath the surface. The lander will dig a trench up to a metre deep in the Martian soil and then deploy a suite of instruments to study the accessible ice, soil and rock. It will also analyse the local atmosphere. Phoenix, which has a budget cap of $325m, will be a joint endeavour between the University of Arizona, the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, and Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Colorado. The Canadian space agency is supplying metrological instruments. The craft, which beat off three other design concepts - a Mars plane, an orbiter and a mission to return Martian dust to Earth - will launch in 2007 and land in 2008. The lander will follow up on the orbiter Mars Odyssey's spectacular discovery of near-surface water-ice over large swathes of the Red Planet. It will touch down in terrain suspected of harbouring as much as 80% water-ice by volume within 30 centimetres of the surface.
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