Russia has ambitious space exploration plans for the current year 2011

http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=15845424&PageNum=0 ^

[kronos77]

Russia resumes this year the exploration of far-away space, after the interruption that lasted several years. The launching of the interplanetary automatic space station Phobos-Ground is scheduled for October. It is to bring to the Earth rock samples from Phobos, satellite of Mars. The first live organisms from the Earth – some 60 of them – will be on board the space station. The Phobos-Ground is planned to be launched off Baikonur with the help of the Zenit-2SB carrier rocket within the framework of the Ground Launch international programme. It will take the space station 11 months to reach the Mars orbit. For several months it will do the remote exploration of Mars and to choose a suitable site for landing on Phobos. After that a landing apparatus will be detached from the space station, will land on Phobos and will take rock samples from the surface of the asteroid, which, in the opinion of some scientists, was captured by Mars. The samples are expected to be made up of the relict substance, of which planets of the Solar system were probably formed. The rock samples will be taken to the Earth. A long-living station will remain at Phobos. It will continue the study of the Mars satellite, the monitoring of the Mars climate and the study of the near-planet space. The Phobos-Ground project will help specialists master all the main technologies, needed for organising more expeditions to Mars, specifically, the landing and the taking of rock samples in conditions of zero gravitation. The interplanetary station is expected to return to the Earth in 2014.

[kronos77]

[SERKIT]

This is what happens when a foreign space agency leaves the promotion of Islam to the American space agency, and actually explores space. Go figure!