PASADENA, Calif. — ­ NASA’s Phoenix Mars spacecraft appears to have made a safe landing on Mars.

Just before 8 p.m. Eastern time, mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory here received a radio signal from the Phoenix on the ground in the icy plains north of Mars’ Arctic circle.

Because the signal was relayed via the Mars Odyssey orbiter, the controllers would have to wait another couple of hours, until Odyssey’s next pass over the landing site, for additional word of the Phoenix’s condition, including whether it had successfully unfolded its solar panels and possibly the first photographs.

If all is operating properly, the next few days will be spent checking out the instruments aboard the lander. Then, it will begin the first upclose investigation of Mars’ north polar regions. That area became a prime area of interest for planetary scientists after NASA’s orbiting Odyssey spacecraft discovered in 2002 vast quantities of water ice lying a few inches beneath the surface in Mars’ polar regions. — By KENNETH CHANG, New York Times

If all goes well, more climate studies, water, and finding some bacteria that corrode rubber and kill everyone who doesn’t drink Sterno… Oh, no, that’s a Michael Chricton novel… never mind.

In other spacey news, a supernova in our backyard was witnessed for the first time by sheer chance… sure, they saw it in January, but this is the first we hear of it? Too busy sciencing, and not busy enough telling us about it.

WASHINGTON — Excited astronomers said on Wednesday they had for the first time caught a supernova on camera just as it was exploding, and they may now learn how to spot others. By luck, they spotted a burst of X-rays while looking at another part of a distant galaxy, and managed to turn a variety of telescopes in the right direction just in time.

“For years, we have dreamed of seeing a star just as it was exploding,” said Alicia Soderberg of Princeton University in New Jersey, who led the international team of astronomers. “We were in the right place, at the right time, with the right telescope, on January 9th and witnessed history,” she added in a statement.– Maggie Fox, Comcast News