Sand goby spot at the rear of the first dorsal fin, ringed with white. The fish has a slender body, and the head is about a quarter of the total length. The sand goby has two dorsal fins with a wider gap between them than the common goby ("Pomatoschistus microps"), the anterior one consisting of six soft spines and the posterior one eight to eleven soft rays. The pelvic fins are fused with the anal fins. There are 58 to 72 scales along the lateral line and these scales are rather smaller than those of the common goby. The caudal fin is
Fobos-Grunt Fobos-Grunt Fobos-Grunt or Phobos-Grunt (, literally "Phobos-Ground") was an attempted Russian sample return mission to Phobos, one of the moons of Mars. Fobos-Grunt also carried the Chinese Mars orbiter Yinghuo-1 and the tiny Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment funded by the Planetary Society. It was launched on 9 November 2011 at 02:16 local time (8 November 2011, 20:16 UTC) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, but subsequent rocket burns intended to set the craft on a course for Mars failed, leaving it stranded in low Earth orbit. Efforts to reactivate the craft were unsuccessful, and it fell back to Earth in an uncontrolled