The head of Russia's space agency Roscosmos - you know, the one that hasn't enjoyed a lot of success lately - isn't sure exactly why Russia's doomed Phobos-Grunt mission failed to fire its engines and escape Earth's orbit on a trajectory for Mars. But he's got a theory: it's the West's fault. At least, that seems to be the between-the-lines meaning of a statement made to the Russian newspaper Izvestia.
At around 7 o'clock this morning, Russia launched 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 kilometres.The mission is a chance to study how planets and moons form.
If it's a space race the Russians want, a space race they shall have. But et tu, Europe? Russian news outlet Ria Novosti is reporting that the European Space Agency (ESA), long the ally of Cold War champion NASA, is teaming with Russia on a joint manned mission to Mars, and that their crew will be the first to set foot on the Red Planet.
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