Seven minutes of terror and triumph as Phoenix lands on Mars this week on

planetary radio.

Hi everyone, welcome to a special edition of Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the

final frontier and now to the Arctic Circle of Mars. I'm Matt Kaplan.

Let's get right to it. Here exactly as it happened on the evening of Sunday, May 25th

are the last few minutes of the Phoenix Landers' perilous

descent to the surface of the Red Planet.

You'll hear the broadcast from the Jet Propulsion Lab, along with commentary from the Planetary Society's Planet Fest, where 750 fans were holding

their breath as they watched the big screen.

We pick up the action as Phoenix Dangles from its parachute, still more than a mile up in the Martian sky.

By the way, if this doesn't get to you, you're listening to the wrong radio show.

It should be any minute. Well, it stays on the parachute for quite some time.

It's several minutes on that parachute.

So that was always...

At the point time, things that normally reached altitude,

we stand by for confirmation by telemetry.

Radio reliable.

So the radar is working.

Out 2,000 meters.

Outitude, convergence detected.

Al Jazeera meters.

1,800 meters, 1,000 meters.

...