Baikonur space center in Kazakh, which will be launched from the spacecraft (French - Archive)
Russia plans to resume its flights to long-term space exploration after an absence of nearly two decades, with the launch of a space probe on Wednesday to Mars to collect samples ofsoil and one of its moons back to Earth.
The Russian space rocket ready for launch from the center "Baikonur" space in the Kazakhcarrying spacecraft on a journey of three years to the moon "Phobos," about the planetMars.
A statement of the mission responsible for Russia's national space agency space(Roskosmos) is scheduled to land a robot on the moon Phobos to collect soil samples and return them to Earth in August / August 2014.
Task
The mission includes sending samples of the bacteria present on the planet able to withstand the harsh conditions to know how to enable them to life there.
The mission will be achieved from a part of the theory that life may have originated on theplanet, and then migrated to another planet via meteorites.
Russian scientists say that the soil of Phobos with the emergence of keys and the origin ofthe planets of the solar system and help to clarify the secrets and mysteries surrounding the planet Mars and the extent of being fit for life now or ever.
Russian scientists and dreams of moon landing on the Red Planet - which take the form ofa potato - since the sixties, which saw Russia's leadership for the successful invasion of the Soviet Union space.
It costs the journey of five billion rubles (163 million dollars), said chief designer of the project Maxim Martynov at the Russian space big "to me or to the Lavochkin" that created the probe, "Phobos" The Martian "has always been a planet inhospitable to Russia has made the United States much greater successes there. "
DelayRussia plans to launch the space flight in 2009, but the postponement due to technical problems and the need to wait until the appropriate time of the launch in 2011.
Russia has launched astronauts into orbit despite the financial difficulty in the nineties, and is now the only vehicles that carry crews to the International Space Station.
The last flights Moscow between the planets in 1988 before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a second flight of the Soviet Union failed to explore Phobos, where contact was lost at a distance of 50 meters from the moon's surface silver, and in 1996 burned a Russian spacecraft again to land on Mars because of the release is well done.
While absent from the long space flights, the United States had hundreds of hours on Mars and sent India and China space probes to Earth's moon and Japan sent a mission to an asteroid and brought samples of the soil.
TestAfter a long absence of the Russian Phobos became a flight test of the Russian space industry after a period of brain drain and modest budgets, and cut off after a trip during which millions of miles down the biggest challenge will be to probe the unknown world weightless.
Said Pascal Lee of the world specialist in the affairs of the planet Mars in the Department of Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), there is no "appeal to help us, it Kalaltham space station without air brakes."
Source: Agencies