Phobos-Grunt set for launch

Shortly before this year’s 54th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 flight, which had opened the space era, the new date was announced for the planned launch of the Russian Phobos-Grunt interplanetary mission. According to the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos), the station will be sent off to Mars atop Zenith-2SB launcher on November 9 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Originally scheduled for 2009, the Phobos-Grunt launch was then postponed to 2011 for technical reasons. In case of another delay, the next launch window will not open until two years from now.

The spacecraft’s propulsion system was delivered to Baikonur from Moscow on 29 September. The station itself arrived there on 17 October.

Viktor Khartov, general director of the Phobos-Grunt developer NPO Lavochkin, says the mission will "lay the foundation for our country’s advance into outer space." Despite the estimated cost of just 5 bln rubles (10 times lower than comparable Western deep-space missions), the program is very complex because it involves a whole set of never-before-flown equipment. The Phobos-Grunt mission is aimed, among other things, at testing a number of key technologies for subsequent expeditions to Mars, including those required for low-gravitation landing and soil sampling.