May 27, 2008 — There is a scene in the 1995 feature film "Apollo
13" when Tom Hanks as astronaut James Lovell demonstrates to his
son how the Apollo lunar module flies to a landing on the Moon
using a toy model of the lander. "And I take the controls, and I
steer it around, and I fly it down, adjusting it here, the
attitude there, pitch, roll... for a nice, soft, landing on the
moon," explains Lovell as he simulates the movement of the
spacecraft with his hand. NASA's Phoenix spacecraft, which
safely touched down within Mars' northern arctic region on
Sunday, followed a similar, though unmanned, autonomous approach
to the surface, becoming the first lander to descend onto the
red planet using thrusters since twin Viking missions in 1976.
Unlike the Apollo module or earlier Mars landers however, there
are no toy or model versions of Phoenix available to parents,
teachers, children or collectors to recreate the spacecraft's
dramatic entry, descent and landing that was described by the
mission's officials as "se