PASADENA, Calif. - After a nearly 10-month journey, a NASA spacecraft will land softly Sunday on the northern polar region of Mars, if all goes as planned. The Phoenix Mars Lander is set to touch down in a broad, shallow valley in the Martian arctic plains believed to hold a vast supply of underground ice. Phoenix's job during the 90-day mission is to excavate the soil and ice to study whether the site could have supported microbial life. The stakes are especially high: Fewer than half of the world's attempts to land on the Red Planet have succeeded. "I'm getting...
