Met Net - Precursory Mission

Precursory Mission

For the earlier launch window, two delivery concepts were being considered:

1. Piggyback delivery attached to the Russian Phobos Grunt Sample Return mission.
2. Dedicated launch using the Russian Volna — a converted Submarine/Sea-Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM).

The FMI announced it would launch the demonstration lander on board the Phobos Grunt mission on 2011. However, the MetNet lander was later dropped from the Phobos-Grunt mission due to weight constraints on the spacecraft. Phobos-Grunt later failed to depart Earth orbit and crashed into the Pacific Ocean on January 16, 2012. The precursory mission is now planned for the 2014 launch window.

The key contributions of the precursory mission are:

• Availability of new and high-quality resolution atmospheric vertical structures as well as long-duration (of the order of a Martian year) in situ meteorological and imaging observations at a single or few landing site(s).
• Demonstrate feasibility of the lander concept for a meteorological network mission.