Lander (spacecraft) 2012. Planned for 2018, NASA's Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher lander mission was cancelled due to budget cuts. Exploration of Mars including the use of landers continues to this day. Amongst them, Russia has planned a Mars sample return mission Mars-Grunt for near 2026, and China for near 2030. While several flybys conducted by Mars orbiting probes have provided images and other data about the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos, only few of them intended to land on the surface of these satellites. Two probes under the Soviet Phobos program were successfully launched in 1988, but in 1989 the intended landings on
Transit of Phobos from Mars 57.75 seconds to get a time of 20:49:02.4 UTC for the center of the shadow. Putting in the longitude/latitude/altitude coordinate values -124,14,0 into JPL Horizons gives an expected time of 20:49 for the transit, which is in good agreement once again. On 1 September 1999 the distance between the Earth and Mars was 9.9 light-minutes. Transit of Phobos from Mars A transit of Phobos across the Sun as seen from Mars takes place when Phobos passes directly between the Sun and a point on the surface of Mars, obscuring a large part of the Sun's disc for an observer on