A robotic dirt-and-ice digger blasted off Saturday on a 422 million-mile (679 million-kilometer) journey to Mars that NASA hopes will culminate next spring in the first ever landing within the red planet's Arctic Circle. The unmanned Delta rocket carrying the Phoenix Mars Lander rose from its seaside pad at 0926 GMT, exactly on time, and hurtled through the clear moonlit sky, the Associated Press reported. If all goes as planned _ a big if considering only five of the world's 15 attempts to land on Mars have succeeded _ the spacecraft will set down on the Martian Arctic plains on May 25, 2008, and spend three months scooping up soil and ice, analyzing the samples in minuscule ovens and mixing bowls.
