It was supposed to analyze Mars' moon Phobos

Sep 26, 2009 08:50 GMT  ·  By

The Russian space agency RosCosmos has recently announced that it will delay its planned Phobos-Grunt mission to Mars' moon Phobos to 2011, a two-year delay from the original launch date, which was set for this year. Officials from the agency say that, since they cannot send the probe now, they will be forced to wait for two years, until the planetary alignment is suitable, and another launch window opens. Phobos-Grunt was to be the Russian Federation's first interplanetary mission in more than ten years, Space reports.

“In recent months, the Phobos-Grunt mission team has been making every effort to meet the October 2009 launch period. More recently, the fully integrated spacecraft has been undergoing testing at NPO Lavochkin, the industrial organization where the spacecraft is being built. It appears that those tests could not be completed in time to assure the spacecraft's readiness for launch,” said Pasadena, California-based Planetary Society's director of projects Bruce Betts. He made the announcement in a post on the Planetary Society's Web site, on September 21.

It was originally planned that the Phobos-Grunt mission would last for three years. Its main goal was to reach the Red Planet's innermost moon, land on it, and collect soil samples. The lander would then take off from the rock, and head back to Earth, which would make this the first return mission on the natural satellite. Additionally, as a secondary objective, the mission also includes a China-built Martian lander, which was to be deployed on the surface of the planet before the Phobos landing. The launch was to take place this October, aboard a Zenith delivery system, RosCosmos announced.

Russia's last attempt at an interplanetary mission was slated to launch for Mars in 1996. However, both the rocket and its payload were lost during the November launch, and RosCosmos decided to focus its efforts on supporting the International Space Station (ISS) and its satellite program from that moment on. Next year, as the shuttles retire, the agency will remain the only one on the planet with crew transport capabilities into low-Earth orbit. The European Space Agency (ESA) already announced its intentions of purchasing one Soyuz capsule per year, so that it could send its own astronauts to the $100 billion space laboratory.