Roscosmos is going to repeat its mission aimed at getting the soil samples from Phobos (natural satellite of Mars) in 2024, said in the draft Federal Space Program for 2016-2025, TASS reports.
According to the document, the spacecraft will be launched in 2024 in the network of Ekspeditsiya-M (Mars-Grunt) project.
The mission assumes delivery of the soil samples from Phobos to Earth. 10,3 billion rubles will be allocated for this project during 2016-2025 period. This is twice as much as a sum specified in the draft program elaborated last year (5,1 billion rubles). In addition, the launch of the spacecraft in the previous version of the program was scheduled for 2025.
Phobos-Grunt automatic interplanetary station was placed into low earth orbit on November 9th 2011. It should have reached the orbit of Mars and land a module on its natural satellite Phobos in parallel with remote sensing of the planet. After that it should have returned to Earth with the soil samples. However, after the launch the spacecraft failed to follow the right trajectory due to engine failure and remained at the low earth orbit.
On January 15th the pieces of the station fell on Earth. According to Russian Ministry of Defense the unburned pieces of Phobos-Grunt dropped into the Pacific Ocean 1250 km to the West of Wellington Island (Chile).