The Russian Luna Glob mission to the Moon is set for 2012, informs ITAR-TASS news agency. The mission aims to collect lunar soil samples and will help to choose a landing site for future missions.

“We are working on the Luna Glob project. It is planned to launch the vehicle in 2012. It will fly around the Moon, select a landing space for the rover and other engineering and research vehicles, and study the lunar nucleus with the use of special penetrators,” said deputy head of the Lavochkin Research and Production Center Vladimir Yefanov.

Equipment of the Luna Globe project will be based on the Fobos Grunt platform, Yefanov said. The next stage of the project is planned to be a Russo-Indian expedition, which will deliver a lunar reconnaissance vehicle to the site chosen by the Luna Glob. Russia prepares to produce the reconnaissance vehicle, while India will possibly develop the orbiter, he said.

The vehicle will collect more samples of lunar soil, which will be stage three of the project. Stage four implies a manned expedition to the Moon and maintaining there a research station.

At the same time Russian Federal Space Agency is holding talks with and European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA on the possible level of Russia’s participation in the ExoMars European Martian mission, told ITAR-TASS the head of the ESA Russian office Rene Pischel.

The problem, Rene Pischel said, is that ExoMars is not included in the ESA budget. It is supposed that this project is going to be financed by countries-members of the project, in exchange for technological orders for national industries. The initial cost of the project was esteemed as €650 million, but the price grew with the time and today it is no less than €1.2 billion, Pischel said.

Austrian and Spanish stations of ESA will co-operate with Russia on the Fobos-Grunt mission due to begin in the fourth quarter of 2009.

The start of the ExoMars mission was already postponed from 2013 till 2016. The mission’s spacecraft will deliver to Mars’ surface a research rover to drill the surface of the Red Planet up to two meters deep in search for possible life forms.

A special bio-container will take samples of life forms from Earth to the Martian moon Phobos.

Model of a space vehicle Fobos-Grunt

“Apart from seeds, we plan to send four species of bacteria, fungi, maxillopoda, Nothobranchius guentheri and African chironomids on a space mission onboard Fobos Grunt in the second stage of the Biorisk experiment,” Natalia Novikova from the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems told ITAR-TASS.

“It is no less important to understand whether it is possible to bring to the Earth microorganisms from other planets or Earth microorganisms that have been to space,” Novikova said, adding that this research will help scientists to resolve the problem of planetary quarantine and protection in future manned interplanetary flights.

Fobos-Grunt will be launched in the fourth quarter of 2009. On reaching Mars the vehicle will spend months choosing the best landing spot on Phobos. A landing capsule will then undock from the mothership and land on moon’s surface to collect valuable relic substance that would help understanding of the forming of the Solar system. The samples will be delivered on Earth later on.

This would not be the end of the mission. An automatic station will stay on Phobos to monitor circumplanetary space and local climate, testing prospective technologies for Martian flights.