Mars 5M, also known as Mars 79 (, or ) was a cancelled

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

sample return mission A sample-return mission is a spacecraft mission to collect and return samples from an extraterrestrial location to Earth for analysis. Sample-return missions may bring back merely atoms and molecules or a deposit of complex compounds such as lo ...

that the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

was planning in the 1970s.

History

Mars 5M grew out of the Mars 5NM and Mars 4NM missions that were canceled along with their intended launch vehicle, the N1 rocket, in 1974. The following year, Soviet Minister of Defence

Dmitry Ustinov Dmitriy Fyodorovich Ustinov (; 30 October 1908 – 20 December 1984) was a Soviet politician and a Marshal of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He served as a Central Committee secretary in charge of the Soviet military–industrial comple ...

, at the urging of Alexander Pavlovich Vinogradov, directed

Lavochkin NPO Lavochkin (, OKB-301, also called Lavochkin Research and Production Association or shortly Lavochkin Association, LA) is a Russian aerospace company. It is a major player in the Russian space program, being the developer and manufacturer of t ...

to develop 5M as a sample return mission to launch in 1980. The launch vehicle was to be the heavy

Proton A proton is a stable subatomic particle, symbol , Hydron (chemistry), H+, or 1H+ with a positive electric charge of +1 ''e'' (elementary charge). Its mass is slightly less than the mass of a neutron and approximately times the mass of an e ...

rocket, using two rockets to send the lander out of Earth orbit to Mars, where it would land, collect samples, and separate for return, with a stage returning to Mars orbit to rendezvous with a return spacecraft delivered by another Proton. The return craft was originally to dock with a station in Earth orbit, though in the final design, which was completed in January 1976, had it travel directly to Earth after sterilizing the samples via heat. To save weight, the return craft would crash land on earth without parachutes, and would be located via a radioactive beacon. Though the Soviet government approved the mission, and production of equipment began in 1977, it was later deemed unfeasible and with proponent Vinogradov having died it was canceled by the end of the year.

References

External links

Encyclopedia Astronautica: Mars 5M
Cancelled spacecraft Mars program {{Mars-stub