* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Phobos-Grunt Mission

Blobrana · L

Russia is about to launch an audacious bid to scoop up rock and dust samples from the Martian moon Phobos and bring them back to Earth for study.
The dusty debris should provide fresh insights into the origin of the 27km-wide moon that many scientists suspect may actually be a captured asteroid.
Read more

Blobrana · L

L minus 1 hour

Blobrana · L

The Phobos-Grunt mission is scheduled to launch at 20:16 GMT, 8th November, 2011.

Blobrana · L

Blobrana · L

Mission to Martian moon is the country's first interplanetary attempt since 1996.

For the first time in 15 years, Russia is getting back into the business of interplanetary space science. It plans to launch an ambitious mission on 8 November to return a sample of soil from the Martian moon Phobos.
The Phobos-Grunt mission (which means Phobos-soil) would welcome Russia back to the elite group of nations - the United States, Japan and the European countries - that do science beyond the Moon. China would also join the club, as embedded in the spacecraft is a small Chinese satellite, Yinghuo-1, that will separate from Phobos-Grunt to orbit and observe Mars.
Read more

Blobrana · L

Earlier this month, inside Paris' majestic Grand Palace, Russia was showcasing its cultural and technological achievements.
At the heart of the Russian space pavilion was an exhibit for the NPO Lavochkin design bureau - the nation's veteran developer of unmanned planetary probes.
Lavochkin's exhibit proudly displayed a scale-model of the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, a mission to land on the potato-shaped moon of Mars and return grains of its mysteriously light surface back to Earth.
Read more

Blobrana · L

Less than two months before the scheduled launch of Russia's flagship planetary spacecraft, officials are set to recommend a delay until 2011.
The Phobos-Grunt mission aims to land on the Martian moon Phobos to collect soil samples and return them to Earth.
The Russian space agency Roskosmos is expected to announce the mission's fate within a week.

Read more

Blobrana · L

Phobos-Grunt Probe to Put Microbial Life in Mars Orbit
A tagalong to the Russian sample-return mission makes some researchers uncomfortable

In Mars exploration, of course, it's the Red Planet itself that gets top billing. But there are some good reasons to keep tabs on Phobos, the innermost and larger of Mars' two diminutive moons, which the Russian space agency plans to study with a probe set for launch next month on board a Zenit rocket.

Read more

Blobrana · L

Yinghuo-1 Mission