Tucson, Ariz. --- NASA officials say plans for the Phoenix Mars Lander's second day of activities on Mars have been delayed. They say it's because of a problem in relaying communications from one of two orbiters relaying commands from Earth.

Fuk Li, manager of the Mars exploration program for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. says that a " Transient Event " on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter turned its UHF radio off. That stopped communications between it and the Lander, but Li and others say it is not a significant problem.

Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, the missions principal researcher, says plans called for maneuvers Tuesday to unhook the Landers 8 foot robotic arm from a latch holding it in place.

I wonder if Marvin the Martian is trying to " sabotage " the mission??

The NASA Mars Lander, Phoenix has discovered life on the Red planet. He says his name is MARVIN. Here he is coming over to have a look at the alien invader.

NASA's newest outpost in the solar system is a polygon cracked terrain in Mars' northern polar region believed to hold a reservoir of ice beneath. Hours after the Phoenix Mars Lander softly landed Sunday 25th. in the Martian arctic plains, it dazzled scientists with the first ever glimpse of the Red planet's high northern latitudes.

A flood of images sent back by Phoenix revealed a landscape similar to what can be found in Earth's permafrost regions, geometric patterns in the soil likely related to the freezing and thawing of ground ice. " This is a scientist's dream, right here on this landing site," principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson said.

Phoenix landed on Mars after a 10 month, 422 million mile journey. After a week checking out its science instruments, the lander will begin a 90 day digging mission to study whether the northern polar region possesses the raw ingredients needed for life to emerge. Phoenix joins the twin rovers on the Martian surface, which have been exploring the equatorial plains since 2004. Unlike the mobile rovers, Phoenix was designed to stay in one spot and dig trenches in the soil.

Early indications show the lander is healthy. The images confirm the lander unfurled its solar panels, hoisted its weather mast and unwrapped the protective covering of its 8 foot long robotic arm. It will be several days before the arm will be unstowed. Everything worked like a dream. Mission control erupted in cheers when a radio signal from Phoenix was detected after a hair raising plunge through the atmosphere that required the lander to slow itself down from over 12,000 mph to a 5 mph touchdown using a combination of friction, parachute and thrusters.

Phoenix's descent was nearly flawless. The only unexpected turn occured when it opened its parachute seven seconds later than planned, causing the spacecraft to settle slightly downrange from the bull's eye target. Phoenix planted its three legs in a broad, shallow valley littered with pebble size rocks that should not pose any hazard to the spacecraft. It looks a little like a parking lot, but that's a safe place to land. There's not any big rocks.

During its prime mission, Phoenix will dig through layers of soil to reach the ice, believed to be buried inches to a foot deep. It will study whether the ice melted during a time in Mars' recent past and will analyze soil samples for traces of organic compounds, which would be a possible indicator of conditions favorable for primative life. The $420 million Phoenix mission is led by the University of Arizona.

WSHINGTON, DC. ---- Everytime Sohaila Rezazadeh rings up a sale at her Exxon station in Fairfax, Va., her cash register sends the information to Exxon Mobil's central computers. If she raises the price of gasoline a couple of pennies, chances are that Exxon will raise the wholesale price she pays by the same amount.

Through a password protected Web portal, Exxon notifies Rezazadeh of wholesale price changes daily. That way the oil giant, which is earning about #3.3 billion a month, fine tunes the pump prices at the franchise Rezazadeh has owned for the past 12 years. Now, however, Rezazadeh says she cannot stay in business. Credit card fees are eating her profit margin. Exxon, which owns the station land, last week handed Rezazadeh a new lease raising her rent about 30 percent over the next three years. She stuck a copy on the window of her station to show customers who are angry about soaring pump prices. Rezazadeh has told Exxon that she cannot make money with the rent that high. Her territory manager's reply, she said, was simple: When you go, leave us the keys.

Rezazadeh, who fled to the United States from Iran in 1979, is part of the long chain that links motorists with the big oil companies. Major integrated U.S. oil companies, which produce crude oil, own refineries and sell gasoline, have been reaping billions of dollars in profit from high oil prices over the past two years, but they are still working to extract every penny they can from the maketing end of the business.

Exxon Mobil doesn't break out it's earnings from marketing alone, but its 2007 profits in worldwide refining and marketing, known as the down stream part of the oil business, reached $9.6 billion, 43 percent of that coming from the United States. Although Exxon owns and operates few stations anymore, less than 10 percent of the 12,000 Exxon outlets in the U.S., it uses franchise agreements to maintain tight control over stations that bear its brand. The company dictates everything from the number of pumps to hygiene practices to the placement of food on convience store shelves. " They monitor everything." said Rezazadeh.

Exxon says that it does all that to maintain uniform quality, while recognizing dealer needs. " We recognize that we are in a difficult time with the run-up in crude oil prices," said Ben Soraci, director of U.S. retail sales for Exxon. " Retailers are under a lot of pressure, and they are on the front lines every day with the motorist, who is also feeling a lot of pressure." Ultimately, Soraci said, " It's in our interest to see them succeed. It's not in our interest to see them hand us the keys." But some Exxon dealers say the company is trying to squeeze too much out of them.

Like Rezazadeh, Scott Burnham was struggling to cope with low margins and rising rents. On May 9th, he closed his station on scenic Knickerbocker Road in Closter, N.J., and abandoned it to Exxon. In March, Exxon had said it would raise his rent by a third over two years. Burnham tried to line up buyers for the franchise, which he purchased for $475,000 just two years ago. But one backed out, saying that the station would lose money no matter how much gasoline it sold.

" Why is the government giving Exxon subsidies and tav breaks when they're making billions of dollars and when they squeeze every dime they can out of every dealer who made that profit for them." Soraci said rent increases reflect rising real estate values, " we have excellent real estate out there that is superior to our competition, which allows the dealers to compete more effectively."

Even some of Exxon's successful and loyal dealers complain. Jerry Daggle owns five Exxon stations in Nortern Virginia and even though they have different competitive conditions and prices, " Exxon magically lets me make about 8 cents a gallon at each one" he said. He said micromanaging extends to the snacks sold at Exxon's On The Run convenience stores. The company uses a planogram to show dealers where to put candy bars and soda. " If I want to put Coke on a different shelf, I have to get special permission. " Recently he was reprimanded for selling mulch on the perimeter of his award winning Gainesville, Va. station, the mulch, though popular in the neighborhood, wasn't an approved product.

Technology has enabled Exxon to tweak its wholesale prices not just by region or state, but by zones as small as a street corner. Although such practices bring cries of outrage from some station owners, they elicit shrugs from some economists. " Retailers put a lot of effort into understanding local markets, whether they're in the airline business where prices for every seat are often determined on a daily basis, or book sellers. There's a lot of fine tuning to adjust prices to local market conditions. The gasoline companies are not very different in that regard."

" We feel very strongly that zone pricing is a method of pricing that at the end of the day allows our dealers to be as competitive as they can be at the retail level, it gives us the opportunity to give a particular retailer or trade area a lower price if competitive conditions require that." says Soraci. Daggle, who has been an Exxon dealer for two decades after working his way up from pumping fuel, said he has done well. But he still cannot fathom how the oil company can charge him different wholesale gasoline prices for each of the five Northern Virginia stations he owns. The stations all sell the same Exxon brand gasoline, delivered from the same terminal in Newington, Va., where it arrives via the same pipeline. It's even dropped off by the same truck and driver hours apart on the same day.

The only thing different is the price, which can vary by 35 cents per gallon. On occasion he has persuaded Exxon to lower his wholesale price to help match price cuts by a station next door in Gainesville.

Consider the game of chicken that plays out every day across Pennsylvania State Highway 441. In Marietta, where the road hugs the Susquehanna River, a Rutter's Farm Store gas station stands on one side, a Sheetz gas station on the other.

Kelly Bosley, who manages Rutter's doesn't even have to look across the highway to know when Sheetz changes its price for a gallon of gas. When Sheetz raises prices, her own pumps are busy. When Sheetz lowers prices, she has not a car in sight. You think you feel helpless at the pump? Bosley makes a living selling gasoline, and even she has little control over what it costs.

So how exactly are fuel prices set? What determines the hair-pulling figure you see displayed in large electronic or plastic numbers? It all starts with oil. the biggest factor in the skyrocketing price of gasoline is the historic ascent of crude oil, which has surged from $45 per barrel in 2004 to more than $135 this past week.

In the first quarter of this year, based on a retail price of gasoline that now seems like a steal, $3.11 a gallon, crude oil accounted for all but about a dollar, or 70 percent, of the cost, according to the federal government. The rest is a complex mix of factors, from the cost of turning oil into gasoline to taxes to marketing costs, to nothing more than the competitive whims of your local gas station owner.

The knee-jerk villains in all of this are the oil companies, fat with multibillion dollar profits, frequent targets of populist anger. But wait, The oil companies don't set the price of oil or the cost of a gallon of gasoline. Prices are a function of the open market, the result of futures contracts being traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange, or Nymex, and other exchanges around the world.

Buying the July crude oil futures contract means you're buying oil that will be delivered by the end of July. But most investors who trade futures have no intention of ever accepting the underlying oil. Like stock investors who frequently buy and sell their holdings, they're simply betting that prices will rise or fall. Of late, on the Nymex, oil futures have been rising.

Why? Blame the falling dollar. Oil is priced in U.S. dollars, and the weaker the dollar gets, the more attractive dollar denominated oil contracts are to foreign investors, or any investor looking for a safe haven in the turbulent stock market. The rush of buyers keeps pushing oil futures to a series of new records, and the rest of the energy complex, including gasoline futures, has followed. That pushes up the price of fuel that goes into your tank.

There is some evidence Americans are buying less gasoline as the price marches higher, and common sense suggests they would cut back even more if gasoline rose to $4.50 or $5 a gallon. Lower demand should mean lower prices, but it takes time for that to happen,given the enormous scale of refining operations that produce gasoline. Once demand begins to slow, that needs to translate into inventories, then you get some price weakening. But it takes a while.

Oil and gasoline prices often move in the same direction, but they aren't linked directly. In fact, while oil prices have more than doubled in the past year, gasoline is only up about 19 percent during the same time. Oil prices often fluctuate with production decisions from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries ( OPEC ) which supplies about 40 percent of the world's crude, or when conflict in the Middle East or Nigeria threatens supplies.

As for gasoline prices, they're closely tied to demand from U.S. drivers and how efficiently refineries are operating. Falling production or inventories often send prices skyrocketing. Those prices can vary greatly depending on the region. The Gulf Coast is the source of about half the gasoline produced in the U.S., and areas farthest from there tend to have higher prices because of the cost of shipping gasoline via pipeline and tanker truck all over the country. Add higher taxes in places such as California and New York that push the price higher.

Oil companies insist their earnings, measured against revenue, are in line with other industries. On top of that, rising oil prices have sharply cut profit margins for refining, and that hits the major oil companies, which both pump oil and refine it for use as gasoline. A giant such as Exxon Mobil can handle the blow. Smaller refiners aren't so fortunate. Sunoco Inc's refining and supply business lost $123 million in the first quarter, hurt by lower margins. Tesoro Corp. lost $82 million for the same period. Higher crude costs have squeezed profits at the refining arms of companies like ConocoPhillips, which don't produce enough crude themselves to refine at full capacity without buying more oil from other producers.

What happens when that gasoline makes its way to your neighborhood gas station? Major oil companies own fewer than 5 percent of gasoline stations. Most are owned by small retailers, and many of them say they're struggling these days to turn a profit. Thats because wholesale gasoline prices have risen sharply in recent months, but station owners have been unable to raise pump prices fast enough to keep pace. And you can't keep jacking up the price when drivers are buying less.

Stations pay tens of thousands of dollars for each fuel shipment before they see a cent in the register. Eventually, many make only a few cents on a gallon of gasoline, a margin that can disapear altogether when credit card fees are added in.

In the Philadelphia suburb of Havertown, Pa, earlier in the week, Sunoco station operator Steve Kehler received a load of gasoline, 9,000 gallons, which he paid $3.729 a gallon for.. " I'm surrounded by $3.89's and I'm already at $3.91 said Kehler, referring to his prices and those of some nearby competitors. The $33,600 Kehler must pay for his overnight gasoline delivery won't be debited from his bank account for a few days. That gives him a little breathing room, time to hold prices steady. Hiking prices too quickly will hurt sales. After paying credit card fees, labor and rent, Kehler will be lucky to break even, many times he loses money on fuel, relying upon his car repair business for income.