Phoenix

·         On May 26, 2008 Phoenix, a small US spacecraft, traversing a distance of  423 million miles over a  10-month period, landed in the north polar region of Mars to begin a three-month search for water and building blocks of life

·         The spacecraft set for a three-month search for water and building blocks of life and successfully sent images of the frozen land within two hours.

·         Prasun Desai, an Indian American engineer has put four years of work to get the solar-powered lander to the red planet

·         Phoenix was launched on August 4 last year with the mission to land for the first time in a polar region which scientists considered as the most likely to have frozen water under a thin layer of soil.