mars sample return

Curiosity Gets a Sister – What Should She Do ? Scientists Speak

December 9, 2012

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter Image caption: Seeing Double – Future Martian Sisters. NASA just announced plans to build and launch a new Mars science robotic rover in 2020 based on the design of the tremendously successful Curiosity rover which touched down safely inside Gale Crater [...]

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Curiosity Majestically Blasts off on ‘Mars Trek’ to ascertain ‘Are We Alone?’

November 27, 2011

Atop a towering inferno of sparkling flames and billowing ash, Humankinds millennial long quest to ascertain “Are We Alone ?” soared skywards today (Nov. 26) with a sophisticated spaceship named ‘Curiosity’ – NASA’s newest, biggest and most up to date robotic surveyor that’s specifically tasked to hunt for the ‘Ingredients of Life’ on Mars, the [...]

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Russian Mars Moon Sample Probe Poised to Soar atop Upgraded Rocket – Video

November 8, 2011

After an absence of almost two decades, Russia is at last on the cusp of resuming an ambitious agenda of interplanetary science missions on Tuesday Nov. 8 3:16 p.m. EST (Nov. 9, 00:16 a.m. Moscow Time) by taking aim at Mars and scooping up the first ever soil and rocks gathered from the mysterious moon [...]

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Phobos-Grunt and Yinghuo-1 Encapsulated for Voyage to Mars and Phobos

November 5, 2011

Phobo-Grunt, Russia’s first interplanetary mission in nearly two decades, has now been encapsulated inside the payload fairing and sealed to the payload adapter for mating to the upper stage of the Zenit booster rocket that will propel the probe to Mars orbit and carry out history’s first ever landing on the petite Martian moon Phobos [...]

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Russia Fuels Phobos-Grunt and sets Mars Launch for November 9

October 29, 2011

Russia’s Space Agency, Roscosmos, has set November 9 as the launch date for the Phobos-Grunt mission to Mars and its tiny moon Phobos. Roscosmos has officially announced that the audacious mission to retrieve the first ever soil samples from the surface of Phobos will blastoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan atop a Zenit-2SB rocket [...]

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