PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — A NASA spacecraft plunged into the atmosphere of Mars and successfully landed in the Red Planet's northern polar region on Sunday, where it will begin 90 days of digging in the permafrost to look for evidence of the building blocks of life.

Cheers swept through mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory when the touchdown signal from the Phoenix Mars Lander was detected after a nailbiting descent. Engineers and scientists hugged and high-fived one another.

"In my dreams it couldn't have gone as perfectly as it went," project manager Barry Goldstein said. "It went right down the middle."

Among Phoenix's first tasks were to check its power supply and the health of its science instruments, and unfurl its solar panels after the dust settled. Mission managers said there would be a two-hour blackout period as Phoenix conducted the checks while out of view from Earth.

Phoenix plunged into the Martian atmosphere at more than 12,000 mph after a 10-month, 422 million-mile voyage through space.

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — A three-legged NASA spacecraft was closing in on Mars today for what scientists hope will be the first-ever touchdown near Mars' north pole to study whether the permafrost could have supported primitive life.

The time it takes the Phoenix Mars Lander to streak through the atmosphere and set down on the dusty surface has been dubbed "the seven minutes of terror" for good reason. More than half of the world's attempts to land on Mars have ended in failures.

"I'm a little nervous on the inside. I'm getting butterflies," Peter Smith, principal investigator from the University of Arizona, Tucson, said on the eve of the landing. "We bet the whole farm on this safe landing and we can't do our science without this safe landing."

Phoenix is pre-programmed to plummet through the Red Planet's atmosphere, and will rely on the intricately choreographed use of its heat shield, parachute and rockets to slow its descent from over 12,000 mph to a 5 mph touchdown.

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The Sun spoke to Steven Squyres ’82, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy, on his experiences with the current Mars Exploration Rover Mission, and his thoughts on the Victoria Crater dilemma and the possibility of landing humans on the Red Planet. Squyres has been teaching astronomy at Cornell since 1986. He is also a principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, which has been ongoing since 2003. On Sept. 27, Opportunity finally reached Victoria Crater after an almost two year long journey.