Russia To Study Martian Moons Once Again

Robbie writes "The Russian space program once faced bleak prospects, receiving meager government funding. Meanwhile, the United States and the ESA continued to send automatic probes to the Red Planet. NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers are now crawling on the planet's surface, while their Russian prototypes never lifted off and are now on display at the Space Research Institute's museum. However, the situation seems to be improving today. Under a stage-by-stage national program for studying Mars, the Phobos-Grunt automatic probe will be launched in October 2009. This cutting-edge modular spacecraft costs just 1.5 billion rubles ($64.4 million)."

Comments

Re:Bread and circuses, minus the bread

[megaditto]

Russia gets more nationalistic and ethnocentric of late.

As does any nation in decline. (Sadly, now including the US of A...)

Re:Bread and circuses, minus the bread

[mahmud]

I guess what you are pointing at is the difference in the quality of management by the governors and the local legislative and executive bodies in different places.

Certainly the quality of the bureaucrats in Russia has a lot of drastic improvements to make. Still, having a decent space program does in no way interfer with the management issues that plague the Russian "glubinka". Quite to the contrary, if the youth of the country will see that the once powerful scientific industry of the country is getting up on its feet again, they will be more eager to join the engineering courses, and other scientific studies that have lost a lot of their glitter and prestige during the wild 90's.

Re:Bread and circuses, minus the bread

[antirelic]

There is never a good time to do anything when it comes to the suffering/malignancies of humanity. If we used every problem as a reason to stop moving forward in other areas, the United States would never have put a man on the moon. Just take a look at this wiki page with references to 1969:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969

You have the Vietnam War, massive protests throughout the country, civil rights movements (and everything that went along with it)... etc.. The world will always be a messy place, no reason to stop making progress.

First ever probe to return to earth from Mars?

[anilg]

Looks like this mission is the first ever in the world with plans to return back to earth from Mars(or its moons). And for under 100 mill$, its a bargain.

Best of luck to the P-G team.