Another try at Mars and its moon Phobos

TIMELINE: 1986-1988

Bolstered with confidence as a result of the extremely successful Vega missions and leading the internationalization of robotic planetary exploration after the Americans had sidelined themselves, the Soviets decided to make another attempt at the Red Planet in 1988. As approved in 1976 by Mstislav Keldysh after the demise of the very ambitious rover and sample return proposals, this Lime the focus would be on the moon Phobos. The spacecraft would enter Martian orbit and after several weeks of orbital phasing during which it would study the planet, it would make a very slow – pass just 50 meters over the surface of Phobos to deposit two landers and undertake not only passive remote sensing by imagers and spectrometers but also active remote sensing with radar, ion beams and laser beams. In addition to the new power hungry active remote sensing instruments, the massive spacecraft would be equipped with a variety of other scientific instruments. Once again the Soviets invited the world’s scientific community to provide investigations for the mission, and this time even American instruments were accommodated.

The Phobos project was a model for international cooperation, but in the end also turned out to be a lesson in the international dissonance caused when such a mission fails. Phobos 1 and Phobos 2 were successfully launched in July 1988, but Phobos 1 was lost early in its interplanetary cruise owing to an elementary operational error. Phobos 2 reached Martian orbit and in just a few weeks conducted enough first-class observations of the planet to make up for all the flawed Soviet missions in the past, but then, just days prior to the close encounter with Phobos, the spacecraft failed to respond to a scheduled communications session and was lost.

W. T. Huntress and M. Y. Marov, Soviet Robots in the Solar System: Mission Technologies and Discoveries, Springer Praxis Hooks 1, DOl 10.1007/978-1-4419-7898-1 19,

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

Launch date

1986

No missions

1987

No missions

1988

7 JuJ Phobos 1 Mars orbitcr Lost enroute

12 Jul Phobos 2 Mars orbitcr Failed in orbit before Phobos encounter