The world’s attention turned again this week to the surface of Mars, as the U.S. space agency’s Phoenix Mars Lander touched down Sunday to begin a 3-month mission digging in the Martian soil for signs of water and life. The mission is generating heavy traffic on the website of the Mars Society – a private worldwide organization dedicated to the robotic and human exploration of the Red Planet. Mars Society Webmaster Alex Kirk says the Phoenix Lander’s arrival on Mars has bumped traffic to more than 100,000 hits a day on the www.marssociety.org website. “We have all the latest news on the Society, a nice RSS [Really Simply Syndication] feed that gives you all the latest news that we are collecting from around the web, and a news letter that tells you what is going on with both mars and the Society.” The Mars Society has 139 affiliated chapters with members in all 50 U.S. states and 70 foreign countries. Many chapters have websites of their own linked to the site.