Space Exploration

  Phobic Main article:  Exploration of Phobic The Russian space mission  Fobs-Grunt , which launched on 9 November 2011, experienced a failure leaving it stranded in  low Earth orbit . [ 40 ]  It was to begin exploration of the  Phobic  and Martian curcuma terrestrial orbit, and study whether the moons of Mars, or at least Phobic, could be a "trans-shipment point" for spaceships traveling to Mars. [ 41 ] Asteroids Main article:  Exploration of the asteroids Until the advent of  space travel , objects in the  asteroid belt  were merely pinpricks of light in even the largest telescopes, their shapes and terrain remaining a mystery. Several asteroids have now been visited by probes, the first of which was  Galileo , which flew past two:  951 Gaspar  in 1991, followed by  243 Ida  in 1993. Both of these lay near enough to  Galileo' s planned trajectory to Jupiter that they could be visited at acceptable cos...