Earth to Mars: Phoenix landing

I saw this clip of the explanation of the Phoenix mission to Mars. This is an attempt to land near the north pole of Mars to see if they can find water or evidence of water:



I love this stuff, having grown up in the Air Force in the 60's on a missile base.

What will be interesting is:

a.) will the craft actually make the descent (other missions have missed)?
b.) will it actually land intact?

Dropping the last bit as the video indicates, seems like a humongous risk. I believe in science. This is really hard work. I'm not taking bets, but, I'm guessing it will land successfully. If it does, the knowledge that comes from that, should be awesome.