Russia Rockets Toward Mars in 2011

Russia is getting ready for the landing of a unmanned spacecraft on Phobos later next year. Phobos is one of the two moons that orbit Mars. Technically the "moons" are considered minor satellites. The mission is to land their Phobos-Grunt spacecraft and take soil samples that will be returned to Earth. The craft is expected to launch sometime in November of next year.

The initial planning stages of the mission began in 1999 and the Russian aerospace company NPO Lavochkin began working on prototype equipment back in 2006. The mission is expected to last around 330 days before returning the soil samples back to Earth. On a similar note, NASA announced plans on July 15 to send astronauts to Mars by 2015 soon after a related mission to an asteroid. Alexei Krasnov, director of Russia's piloted space programs, says NASA will not have the technology for such deep space missions by 2015.

The Russians haven't decided if they will use a Soyuz or a Soyuz-2 launcher to propel their Orbiter/Lander and the Earth Return Vehicle to Phobo. The flight will be initiated at the Baikonur launchpad located at the Baikonur complex in Kazakhstan. This Baikonur Cosmodrome is considered the worlds largest space center.

Unlike the Earth's moon Phobos and Deimos, the second moon orbiting Mars, are irregular in shape. Phobo is the larger of the two measuring 27 km at it's longest magnitude. The moons were both formed differently than our moon and Phobos is very close to the Mars surface. Phobos is about 3000 miles above the Martian terrain and makes three orbits in a Martian day taking about seven hours for one orbit. Phobos is closer to Mars than Deimos. Deimos takes about 30 hours to make one orbit and is much farther out in space.

Phobos is named after the Greek god Phobos that means "fear". Both moons are considered "captured moons", not originally part of Mars and have been used as objects of science fiction and mythological fantasy for many years.

I believe that Russia's space ambitions can be a good thing as long as the technology is used for peaceful purposes. If the United States and Russian could ever get along well enough to share more missions, as we have in the past, space technology could move forward at a tremendous rate. One would think that collaboration would be the most conservative way to keep from wasting global resources instead of allowing competition to duplicate similar efforts.

"Phobos-Grunt." smsc.cnes.fr
"The Moons of Mars." csep10.phys.utk.edu
"Russia to Test Unmanned Lander for Mars Moon Mission." en.rain.ru
"Russia scoffs at NASA plans to send astronauts to asteroid, Mars by 2015." en.rain.ru