On May 25th, 2008, the world may finally know if life exists on other planets. Or at least that’s the hope of the scientists behind NASA’s Phoenix, the first Mars Scout Mission scheduled to launch in August of 2007. Rising out of the design and discovery of previous Mars missions, the Phoenix will travel to the lower latitudes of Mars to analyze the abundant and accessible ice discovered in 2002 by the Gamma Ray Spectrometer. “Water is the building block of life,” says Project Manager Barry Goldstein. “On Earth, life is everywhere. Our hope is that we will discover some of the building blocks of life in the ice on Mars.”