Delay likely for Russian Mars probe
SEP 17, 2009
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.023693
BBC News : 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.Sources within the Russian space industry gave RussianSpaceWeb.com details of the likely postponement.The Russian space agency Roscosmos is expected to announce the mission’s fate within a week.The agency’s decision will be based on results of testing which the spacecraft has been undergoing since July at its assembly facility at NPO Lavochkin in Khimki, near Moscow.A delay for Phobos-Grunt would also affect China’s first Mars probe Yinghuo 1 , as the two craft are due to be launched together on the same Zenit rocket .
© 2009 American Institute of Physics
