Fobos-Grunt
Videos
Fobos-Grunt or Phobos-Grunt was an attempted Russian sample return mission to Phobos, one of the moons of Mars. Fobos-Grunt also carried the Chinese Mars orbiter Yinghuo-1 and the tiny Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment funded by the Planetary Society.
Image of Phobos. The Fobos-Grunt project began with the feasibility study of a Phobos sample-return mission in 1999.
Mockup of the spacecraft's main propulsion unit
Modules -- A: lander, B: return module, C: reentry vehicle (not shown). Major components -- 1: solar panels, 2: reaction wheels, 3: landing gear, 4: robotic sample arm (second arm not shown), 6: sample transfer container, 7: attitude control thrusters, 8 and 10: fuel and helium tanks, 9: return module solar panels. Scientific instruments (some instruments are not visible from this angle or are not present on the model) -- a: Termofob thermodetector, b: GRAS-F seismogravimeter; c: METEOR-F cosmic dust detector, d: GAP (Gas Analytic Package) pyrolizer/thermal-differential analyzer, e: GAP chromatograph; f: GAP mass spectrometer, g: LAZMA mass spectrometer, h: MANAGA mass spectrometer, i: FPMS dust detector
The Planetary Society
Videos
The Planetary Society is an American internationally-active non-governmental nonprofit organization. It is involved in research, public outreach, and political space advocacy for engineering projects related to astronomy, planetary science, and space exploration. It was founded in 1980 by Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman, and has about 60,000 members from more than 100 countries around the world.
