Failed · Failure
Phobos-Grunt (alternatively Fobos-Grunt) was a Russian mission designed to land on the martian moon Phobos and return a sample to Earth. The primary scientific objective was to analyze the sample on Earth to understand the origin and reconstruct the history of Phobos. It was launched with a Chinese Mars orbiter mission, Yinghuo-1. The spacecraft did not perform its scheduled burn to begin its trajectory to Mars and could not leave Earth orbit. It re-entered Earth's atmosphere on 15 January 2012.
- Destinations
- Launch vehicle
- Zenit
- Launch site
- Tyuratam (Baikonur Cosmodrome), Kazakhstan
- Countries
- Russia
- Mission types
- Sample return, Lander
Chronology
Mission timeline
Launch
Launched into an elliptical Earth orbit it never left
Phobos-Grunt launched on 8 November 2011 at 2016 UT on a Zenit 2SB41.1 rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan into an elliptical Earth orbit, and the launch/orbital information page gives the same instant as 2011-11-08T20:16:00Z. The plan was to use a Fregat upper stage to carry Phobos-Grunt and Yinghuo-1 on an eleven month cruise to Mars. However, the later firings never occured and the spacecraft remained in Earth orbit. The committed launch vehicle is the Facts in Brief value Zenit; the fuller Zenit 2SB41.1 the page's own text prints is recorded here. The agency and country both come from Funding Agency Unknown (Russia), which is the only attribution any page cited here prints.
EarthMission end
Re-entered Earth's atmosphere two months after launch
It reentered the atmosphere on 15 January, 2012, which the launch/orbital information page prints as Decay Date: 2012-01-15. GCAT's satcat row S37872 gives the same spacecraft a Dest of 46S 87W, which is a fall location rather than a destination.
Earth
Mission architecture
Vehicles
Phobos-Grunt · Lander
Destinations: Mars
Fobos-Grunt SA · Return capsule
Trajectory record
Trajectory dataset not yet available
No verified trajectory dataset is committed for this mission, so Mission Atlas renders no path.
Provenance
Sources
Each source is listed once and labeled with the mission, event, trajectory, or destination/body context it supports.
Data verified through September 2, 2026
- Phobos-Grunt - NSSDCA Master Catalog (spacecraft 2011-065A), archived snapshot — NSSDCAArchive · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- Phobos-Grunt - NSSDCA launch/orbital information (2011-065A), archived snapshot — NSSDCAArchive · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- Chronology of Mars Exploration - NASA NSSDCA, archived snapshot — NSSDCAArchive · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- GCAT: General Catalog of Artificial Space Objects (satellite catalog), J. McDowell — OTHEROther · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- GCAT: General Catalog of Artificial Space Objects (auxiliary catalog), J. McDowell — OTHEROther · Supports: mission claims
- Planet Sizes and Locations in Our Solar System — NASAOther · Supports: destination/body context