Mars-Aster was a proposed Russian mission for a

Mars rover A Mars rover is a motor vehicle designed to travel on the surface of Mars. Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers: they examine more territory, they can be directed to interesting features, they can place themselves in sunny pos ...

. It was part of exploration plans outlined by the Space Council of the

Russian Academy of Sciences The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; russian: Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к (РАН) ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across ...

in 1997. The project was delayed in the mid-2000s in favor of

Phobos-Grunt Fobos-Grunt or Phobos-Grunt (russian: link=no, Фобос-Грунт, where ''грунт'' refers to the ''ground'' in the narrow geological meaning of any type of soil or rock exposed on the surface) was an attempted Russian sample return miss ...

and

Luna-Glob Luna-Glob (russian: Луна-Глоб, meaning ''Lunar sphere'') is a Moon exploration programme by Roscosmos meant to progress toward the creation of a fully robotic lunar base. When completed, the programme will continue with crewed lunar miss ...

, and it has not been approved since then.

References

{{spacecraft-stub Cancelled spacecraft Missions to Mars Russian space probes