A computer hacker breached the university-run Web site that serves as the official public-information hub for NASA’s latest mission to Mars on Friday, leading officials to temporarily take down the site to deal with the issue. The digital intruder replaced a news update on the Phoenix Mars Mission’s Web page with the hacker’s signature and a link to a foreign Web site, a NASA spokeswoman told the Associated Press. The Web site is now back online.

The site is hosted by the University of Arizona, which is serving as the operations center for the mission. This is the first Mars mission to be run from a university. The latest Mars robotic lander made a dramatic entry to the Red Planet’s surface late last month, and landed safely in its arctic region. The aim of the mission is to analyze the soil and ice to determine whether this part of Mars was hospitable to life.

Public Web sites for space missions are generally kept separate from the computer systems involved with coordinating the mission, so the hacking incident most likely did not compromise the distant lander’s operations. —Jeffrey R. Young