On November 9, Roscosmos (the Russian Federal Space Agency) launched an unmanned mission intended to travel to Mars and its larger moon Phobos. Onboard was a Chinese microsatellite to have orbited the red planet for a year and the Russian Phobos-Grunt lander, which was to have retrieved a soil sample from Phobos to return it to Earth. Unfortunately, the mission failed as the spacecraft failed to leave Earth orbit.
credit: Russian Federal Space Agency
source: http://www.roscosmos.ru/main.php?id=376
