Phobos-Grunt Options

[tedstryk]

In Astronomy's February issue, they report that Russia has approved funding for the Phobos-Grunt mission. Design work has gone on since 1997, and the new design is scaled down to fly an a Soyuz rocket instead of the larger Proton. The main purpose is similar to Phobos-2, with the addition of a sample return. Also being discussed is the possibility of it carrying a few "meteorological stations" fof Mars itself. Generally, I have written this mission off as "never going to happen," but with the new Russian alliance with ESA, I wonder if they might be able to actually fly this thing. Also, with Putin's increasingly Soviet-style leadership, and with the likelyhood of lunar missions from China and India, Russian pride might drive this mission. If so, I have a concern. This mission sounds really, really ambitious. And the Russians have never even sent a fully successful Mars orbiter, and that is when they launched them in pairs or triplets. Still, if the mission flies, even if it doesn't bring back Phobos soil it might obtain some interesting results. Here is ESA's Phobos-Grunt page:
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/ESA_Permanent_...IJFW4QWD_0.html

Also, ESA has another page on potential Russian programs, although this seem to be nothing but pipe dreams at the moment. Would be a cool mission though.

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/ESA_Permanent_...0LFW4QWD_0.html

And also a page on the only partially realized current Russian project, its program to put instruments on other's spacecraft, such as HEND on Odyssey.

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/ESA_Permanent_...HMFW4QWD_0.html

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

An interesting tidbit from Tony Reichhardt's News article in the December 15, 2005, issue of Nature:

"Russia's long-suffering space scientists had reason to celebrate last week as a generous funding increase was approved for the national space agency, giving hope to missions that have long been on hold.

[...]

"One such mission, called Phobos-Grunt, now seems to be on track to launch in 2009. It will head for the martian moon Phobos, where it will land and collect a soil sample before returning to Earth. The mission has been scaled down — it will use conventional propulsion and launch on a Soyuz rocket, instead of the more expensive Proton — but it should still manage to land 45 kilograms of scientific instrumentation on Phobos.

"Spacecraft engineers at the Moscow-based Lavochkin Association are laying plans for an ambitious mission called Luna-Glob, which would deliver an orbiter and a network of instruments to the Moon for geophysical studies. This mission would probably get funding only after Phobos-Grunt is well under way, says [Mikhail] Marov [of the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics in Moscow]."

References:

Budget boost gets Russia back in the space game
Tony Reichhardt
Nature 438, 896 (2005)
doi:10.1038/438896b
Full Text

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At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, I'll only say that I'll believe in this mission when I see it. I was at an International Astronautical Congress in Toulouse, France, a few years back when a presentation for this mission was given by individuals from the Moscow Aviation Insititute and the Lavochkin Association. None of the others present who heard the presentation believed it would ever happen, at least not without involvement from the U.S. or Europe. In fact, a few "western space professionals" laughed outright, and one said "they're [the Russians] just looking for outside support."

Having said that, I hope it does come off, given that the Aladdin concept never made the downselect in a couple of Discovery solicitations, and especially if Gulliver never gets selected as a future Discovery mission. Indeed, I think both Phobos and Deimos get short changed in the U.S. and European Mars exploration architectures.

This post has been edited by AlexBlackwell: Dec 14 2005, 07:38 PM

[ElkGroveDan]

Let's hope they keep away from the Lipovitan-D.