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

[konangrit]

Some more details have been announced for the Chinese contribution named "Yinghuo-1":

China's first Mars probe will be launched in October 2009 as part of a joint mission with Russia, say sources with the Shanghai Space Administration, the main developer of the probe.

Researchers are pressing ahead with a joint launch with a Russian probe, said Chen Changya, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Satellite Engineering, at a space technology exhibition here.

Initiated by Shanghai Space Administration, the China-made probe will be developed by a number of organizations, including the Center of Space Science and Applied Research with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shanghai Meteorological Observatory. Chen has been invited to work in the development of the probe to the Mars.

During Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Russia in late March, the two governments signed an agreement to launch joint exploration of Mars and Phobos, the innermost and biggest of the red planet's moons.

Under the agreement, a Russian rocket will lift a Chinese probe, actually a satellite, and a Russian exploration vehicle -- known as Phobos-Grunt -- to survey Mars and Phobos.

The small Chinese satellite will explore Mars while the Russian craft will land on Phobos to explore the environment and take soil samples.

The two vehicles will reach the orbit of Mars in 2010 more than10 months after their launch.

"We hope to explore the spatial environment there, secrets behind disappearance of water, and the features of evolution," said Chen.

The China-made probe -- 75 centimeters long, 75 centimeters wide, 60 centimeters high and weighing 110 kilograms -- was designed for a two-year mission, said Chen.

China still needed to achieve breakthroughs in three key technologies of remote observation and control, automatic control and heat control, said Chen.

A design for the Chinese probe would have been finished by April next year, but the probe would be finished by June 2009.

Xinhua