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

[tedstryk]

That is some pretty interesting stuff. Back in the 80's, when our planetary program (other than already flying projects like Viking, Voyager, PVO, and ICE) wasn't flying any new spacecraft, the Soviets were the only major game in town. They spent the early part of the decade studying Venus (including the landers and the balloons), contributed a major component of the Halley flotilla, and then went to Mars with the Phobos mission. The Phobos spacecraft were the first of a new plan for exploration that included missions very similar to the Fortuna mission in that literature. They included balloons, rovers, and orbiters for Mars, and, yes, Phobos-Grunt (a much more sophisticated version). There was also an advanced Venera program. There was a great article sometime in 1988 in Astronomy about it. Then, of course, after the first of these new missions launched (Phobos '88), the whole Soviet system crumbled. Mars '96 (Which would have been Mars '90 - the original Mars'96 plan was a veritable Battlestar Galactica with rovers, balloons, and landers) managed to peter along and make it to the launchpad but was unlucky enough to have a bad upper stage on its launch vehicle. Phobos-Grunt, scaled down to fly on a Soyuz instead of a larger Proton rocket, was the only mission for which real design work continued. They have periodically presented other missions, both on their websites and at conferences, such as Venera-D and various asteroid missions, but I think they are generally sales-pitches in hopes of international funding which would be needed to fly them. Phobos-Grunt is the only mission that the Russian parliament and Putin have actually agreed to fund. That is why I take it more seriously. Putin feels threatened by Bush's Moon-Mars plan, and a Phobos sample return mission in 2009 would be a great way to upstage MSL. Of course, one has to hope that Russian space technology has improved...This mission will have to be longer lived than previous Russian spacecraft. But it has great potential.