Russian Probe Launches Today, Heading to Mars' Runt Moon
Phobos-Grunt and Upper Stage A model of the Phobos-Grunt probe with its upper state MKonair on Flickr At 3:16 pm EST today, Russia will launch the Phobos-Grunt mission from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The unmanned probe is traveling to the Martian moon Phobos, in an attempt to bring back the first soil sample ("grunt" is Russian for "soil") from the smaller of the planet's moons. The irregularly shaped Phobos is the closest moon to its planet in the solar system, orbiting the red planet at just under 10,000 kilometers.The mission is a chance to study how planets and moons form. Beyond its scientific value, the mission serves as a much needed morale boost for the Russian space program. If it succeeds, it will be the first successful planetary mission since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. "The problem with Russian space exploration has been that people have forgotten...