Two days five hours to go until Phoenix lands on Mars, the mission is what NASA have dubbed a quick scout mission, where it'll briefly look into history of water on Mars and any habitability potential in the ice-rich soils near the Martian poles.

Phoenix itself will land on Sunday at 23:53:52 (+/- 46 seconds) UT (Monday 00:53:52 BST), as you can see from the drawing above there will be no penny-pinching inflatable beach ball landing for this mission. I'm hearing it'll be broadcast on NASA TV, which should be interesting as I've recently got NASA TV working on my Xbox 360 Media Center Extender again. It'll be doing some of the work that the lost Mars Polar Lander was supposed to be doing.

Emily Lakdawalla will have more details as they roll in on the Planetary Society blog.