After the failure of the mission Phobos-Grunt, the leadership of the Russian space agency has decided to turn down their most ambitious and expensive projects — flights to the planets of the solar system. The crash of the interplanetary probe Phobos-Grunt has been very costly to both the manufacturer of the device — NPO Lavochkin — and the scientific space program as a whole.
According to Izvestiya, a senior source at the Russian Space Agency said that they have decided to end a number of long-term projects to study planets in the solar system with the interplanetary probes.
An updated version of the Federal Space Program for 2006-2015 excludes 16 projects, including Mars-NET, Mercury II, Venera-D, Spectrum-RGM, Spectrum-UFM and a number of others — said a source in the Russian Space Agency, adding that the list of closed projects in February, was sent for approval to the government.
The Lavochkin company tainted its reputation somewhat with the unsuccessful launch of the interplanetary probe Phobos-Grunt in November of last year.
According to the source in the Russian Space Agency, rather than interplanetary research, the federal space program is expected to include a project to create a multi-purpose space system called "Arctic." The project involves the construction and launch of multiple satellites, which can continuously monitor the Arctic territories.