A C-17 from Charleston AFB, S.C., airlifted NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander spacecraft from Colorado to Florida. A NASA release says that Lockheed Martin workers in Denver had been assembling and testing the spacecraft for more than a year. NASA plans to launch Phoenix, which is designed to test a Martian Arctic plain to see whether it could have sustained microbacterial life, aboard a Delta II from Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla., in August.
F-35As from the Vermont Air National Guard have deployed to Puerto Rico in recent days, continuing a major buildup of U.S. Air Force assets in Latin America aimed at combating drug trafficking and pressuring the regime of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.
