This will be done by: Broad public outreach to instill the vision of pioneering Mars; Support of more aggressive government-funded Mars exploration programs around the world; and Mars exploration conducted on a private basis. Starting small, with hitchhiker payloads on government-funded missions, we intend to use the credibility that such activity will engender to mobilize larger resources that will enable standalone, private robotic missions and ultimately human exploration.

May is an exciting month for the Mars Society. The Mars Society will be on the Martian surface with our Scout concept. On 25 May the Phoenix Mars Lander is set to land in the northern arctic plains near the Martian North Pole. The Phoenix Scout Mission was selected by NASA as the first mission to be flown as part of the Mars Scout Program, a highly competitive program allowing varied entities based within industry, academia, and government to propose missions and vie for sponsorship based on relative merit in science, cost, and risk. Contributions to the Phoenix Scout Mission come from the U.S., Canada, Switzerland, and Germany.

Under the name "Mars Discovery," this program was first proposed by the Mars Society at our 1998 Founding Convention as a principal way to augment the robotic Mars Exploration Program with an assortment of highly creative concepts from across the scientific community. NASA instituted the concept in 2000. Subsequently, a competition was held, and Phoenix was selected from a field of more than 30 concepts in competition in 2003.

Phoenix will search for evidence to help solve the puzzle of past or present Martian life. It will utilize the idle Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander, which was cancelled after the 1999 failure of the Mars Polar Lander at the Martian South Pole. Phoenix will use a soft-landing system that employs rocket thrusters instead of airbags. Such soft-landing systems will be imperative for future human exploration missions.