See here.
It's an article about the Mars Phoenix probe landing on Mars yesterday. Which is excellent news.
However, there's one line in it that made me confused:
In 2003, Smith proposed a plan to re-engineer the Mars Surveyor and fly it on a mission to look for signatures of life in the ice and dirt of Mars far North. Mars Phoenix, literally and figuratively, rose from the ashes of Surveyor.
Very poetic. But how, exactly, did the Phoenix probe literally rise from the ashes of the Surveyor? Did NASA send another probe to Mars to collect the previously destroyed lander just so that they could make the Phoenix out of it? That seems like a waste of money.
News websites, and news in general, are just getting worse and worse. And don't even get me started on Fox News (who yesterday had a pundit call Obama 'Osama' and then joke that he should be assassinated &ndash is that really necessary?).
Update: I misread the article a bit – apparently the original lander never went to Mars. So the original joke is lost somewhat. But, call me a pedant, the point still remains: the new lander did not literally rise up from the ashes of the old one - it just is the old one reengineered. See the comments for more.
