More than 1,000 candidates from 200,000 hopefuls have been chosen to train for a private Mars colonisation mission to be partly funded by a reality-TV show following their training and subsequent steps, organisers have said.

Everything is looking good for the Phoenix Mars probe which is due to land on the Red Planet on Monday, mission scientists said.

Scientists are beginning efforts to retrieve solar atoms from the crashed Genesis space capsule, a day after it plunged to earth and slammed into the Utah desert.