Phoenix Mars Lander, NASA’s robotic spacecraft on a space exploration mission to Mars under the Mars Scout Program, is going to complete its nine-month journey from Earth to Mars on 24th May. According to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Phoenix is expected to land on the red planet's North Pole to conduct a 90-day digging mission on Sunday.

Since its launch last Aug. 4, Phoenix, aiming to touchdown the unexplored northern regions of Mars, traveled 422 million miles. Its developers on Earth are watching every move of it with their fingers crossed, because 55 percent of spacecraft sent to land on Mars have failed

Dr. Edward Weiler, associate administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration science division, said, “There are many, many risks and uncertainties.”

Although the Phoenix Lander, a conglomeration of parts from two earlier failed missions, has been tested and rechecked to correct all known design flaws and potential errors, Dr. Weiler said, “There are always the unknown unknowns.”

Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said that for him the most hair-raising part of the journey will begin about 14 minutes before touchdown

According to the mission manager, If all goes as planned, the Lander is to set down on Vastitas Borealis, the arctic planes of Mars roughly equivalent to northern Canada on Earth, about 15 minutes before mission control receives confirmation at 7:53 p.m. Eastern time. The first picture from the spacecraft, expected to be an image of its deployed solar power panels, should arrive about two hours later.

Launched last summer from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the three-legged Phoenix Mars Lander fitted with an 8-foot aluminum-and-titanium robotic arm capable of digging trenches 2 feet deep, is on mission to explore the unexplored arctic region where a reservoir of ice is believed to lie beneath the Martian surface. It is sent to study whether the ice ever melted and look for traces of organic compounds in the permafrost to determine if life could have emerged at the site, but it lacks the tools to detect signs of alien life — either now or in the past.