Phobos-Grunt, an ambitious mission to land on the larger of Mars ’ two moons, collect samples and return them to Earth, launched successfully on November 9, 2011.

Russia on Tuesday blamed a computer malfunction caused by the impact of cosmic rays for the failure of its Phobos-Grunt mission to Mars, one of a litany of setbacks for its embattled space programme.

The Phobos-Grunt (Grunt means "earth," "dirt" or "ground" in Russian) was Roscosmos's most ambitious space mission in fifteen years.

The last Soviet interplanetary mission occurred in 1996: a probe to go to Mars “built by the same Moscow-based NPO Lavochkin company” which constructed Phobos-Grunt, said AP.

Russia's botched Mars probe mission Phobos-Grunt is fast-approaching a fiery death, with just one or two days remaining before it falls from space, experts and Russian space officials say.

Phobos-Grunt (Phobos is one of Mars' two moons; Grunt is Russian for ground) had an ambitious mission -- to orbit Mars, land on Phobos, scoop up a soil sample, and bring it home for study.

Like Phobos LIFE, the Yinghuo-1 orbiter hoped to catch a ride to Mars on Phobos-Grunt. The Society’s Director of Projects, Bruce Betts, is following developments very closely. Dr.

Attached to Phobos-Grunt is China’s Mars orbiter, Yinghou 1, which is now also destined for a destructive re-entry next month. [Photos of the Phobos-Grunt mission] Loaded with rocket fuel ...

Leonard David at Space.com reports that one of the scientists behind the Phobos-Grunt mission, Russia's unmanned probe to the Martian moon Phobos, has written an open letter apologizing for the ...

If Russia's Phobos-Grunt Mars moon sampling mission fails to reach Mars, it's worth launching a copy of the spacecraft on a second try, one of the science team members says.