Russia will launch a probe to a moon of Mars on Tuesday, resuming the country's exploration of the solar system after funding woes and mission failures hindered progress over the last two decades. The Phobos-Grunt mission will launch from Kazakhstan on a Zenit rocket. Credit: Roscosmos The ambitious Phobos-Grunt mission, first conceived in the 1990s, will attempt to enter orbit around Mars, land on the Red Planet's potato-shaped moon Phobos, collect samples and return to Earth. Grunt means soil in Russian. Russia has tried to land on Phobos before, but two probes launched in 1988 failed before they reached their goal. The failure, coupled with another embarrassing Mars mission malfunction in...
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