Russian will launch on Nov. 8 spacecraft that will explore Mars, bring back soil samples from its moon ‘Phobos", and conduct an astrobiology experiment from the Canada-based Planetary Society.

The project called ‘Phobos-Grunt' ("grunt" is Russian for "soil") also includes a Chinese spacecraft called Yinghou 1 that will orbit Mars, and an astrobiology experiment which will test a theory that living organisms arrived on Earth inside meteorites.

This will be the first time Russia will attempt an interplanetary mission after a launch accident happened 15 years ago. Now Russia is raring to resume its space exploration with the liftoff of an unmanned Zenit rocket carrying Phobos-Grunt from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

After the launching of the spacecraft this Nov. 8, the spacecraft will put itself into an elliptical orbit around Mars within 11 months and release China's orbiter to begin its year-long independent mission and gradually sync up with Phobos, the larger of Mars' two moons.

The formation of Martian moon Phobos and its sibling moon Deimos remain a puzzle to most scientists. The moons are comparatively smaller than Earth's moon which is believed to have been formed from a cloud of debris left circling the planet after young Earth was smashed by an object about as big as Mars.

Astronomer and planetary scientist Brett Gladman of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver said with Phobos and Deimos, the explanation is that these are asteroids captured from the main asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter also taxes the laws of physics.

"Phobos and Deimos present a puzzle that there's no well-understood, coherent explanation for," Gladman said.

"That's what makes them so interesting."

But some answers should be coming from the Phobus-Grunt project, particularly after the soil samples returning from the Martian moon have been analyzed.

The exact landing date for the Phobos-Grunt descent module is expected to occur in February 2013 but nothing is certain until after the probe settles into orbit. The robotic arm on the lander will collect around 5.5 ounces of tiny rocks and dirt and scooped into a canister. The container and its protective capsule will then be ejected off the lander to begin the trip back to Earth and is expected to arrive in August 2014.

Part of the project is the Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment, or LIFE, which simulates conditions that microbes inside meteorites might have experienced. The experiment is intended to determine if the organisms could survive in space.

Together with the return capsule will be a small sealed container with 11 microorganisms from Earth which is part of Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE). This project simulates conditions that microbes inside meteorites might have experienced. The experiment is intended to determine if the organisms could survive in space.

Bett said samples include plant seeds, three species of tardigrades (commonly known as "water bears" ) and other micro-organisms, most of which have been found in extreme environments on Earth, including places of high radiation, high salt concentration and high -- or extremely low -- temperature. All three domains of life -- bacteria, eukaryota and archaea -- will be represented.

While similar experiments have been flown on the space shuttles, the Phobos-Grunt mission will be the first time the microbes spend years, rather than days in space and fly beyond the protective shell of Earth's magnetic field exposing them to more and harsher radiation.

"We're trying to see what happens when they're exposed to the environment of deep space," said Bruce Betts, Planetary Society projects director.

The Phobos samples and LIFE experiment will fly back to Earth but Russia's lander will be continuing studies of the moon.