Journey to Mars | NASA Documentary

Launched on Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix landed on May 25, 2008, farther north than any previous spacecraft sent to Mars. The lander dug, scooped, baked, sniffed and tasted the Red Planet's soil. Among early results, it verified the presence of water-ice in the Martian subsurface, which NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter first detected remotely in 2002. Phoenix's cameras also returned more than 25,000 pictures from sweeping vistas to near the atomic level with the first atomic force microscope ever used outside Earth. During its mission, Phoenix confirmed and examined patches of the widespread deposits of underground water ice detected by Odyssey and identified a mineral called calcium carbonate that suggested occasional presence of thawed water. The lander also found soil chemistry with significant implications for life and observed falling snow. The mission's biggest surprise was the discovery of perchlorate, a chemical on Earth that is food for some microbes and potentially toxic for others.