The Mars mission called Phoenix is doing pretty well, as reported Monday during a news conference held by NASA. Despite having a redundant system to survive any possible mishaps, “Up to this point, we haven’t needed any of it,” Phoenix program manager Edward Sedivy mentioned.

In about a week, after checking and double checking the spacecraft and its systems, the homemade spacecraft will be ready to start digging and taking samples.

Now that may not seem like great or interesting news to all of us non-astronauts and non-engineers, but seeing the Mars surface and its “lumpiness” of “polygon shaped furrows” is pretty catching to the eye. The guys at NASA believe that these furrows were actually caused by the repeated expansion of underwater layers of ice. Which is to say that depending on the temperature, the ice either expands or contracts (hot and cold temperatures respectively) and creates cracks or ice wedges, letting in dust and soil fall in. This in turn creates the so called “lumpiness.”

Just like in the Arctic, the wetter part of the sub-zero no-mans land has similar ice wedges made by the same natural occurrences. Therefore, it’s safe to assume that at some point in Mars’ history the ice was melted, which means that running water must have been present. This presumption makes Mars an even stronger contender for our home. Scientists just have to find a way for us to move there before we mess up the Earth completely.