Jul 7 1988
From The Space Library
The Soviet Union successfully launched the Phobos 1 spacecraft to Mars aboard a 198-foot Proton launch vehicle from the Baikonur launch facility. Phobos 1 and Phobos 2, scheduled for launch the following week, would carry 100-pound landers designed to analyze Phobos, the larger of the two moons of Mars. The 17-mile-long, potato-shaped Phobos and its smaller moon Deimos were thought to be asteroids captured by the gravitational field of Mars. Tracking support for the Soviet missions would be provided by NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN), whose primary mission would be to provide essential tracking data to permit landings on Phobos. The DSN would then shift to enabling a key scientific goal of the mission, to track Phobos very precisely. The 13,000-pound Phobos spacecraft would carry more than two dozen robotic instruments on their 200-day journey to Mars. (FBIS-Sov-88-131, Jul 8/88; SSR 1988 058A; NASA Release 88-87; UPI, Jul 8/88; NY Times, Jul 8/88; W Post, Jul 8/88;)
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