Mercury-P (russian: Меркурий-П) is a mission concept for an orbiter and lander by the

Russian Federal Space Agency The State Space Corporation "Roscosmos" (russian: Государственная корпорация по космической деятельности «Роскосмос»), commonly known simply as Roscosmos (russian: Роскосмос) ...

to study the planet Mercury. The initial study suggested a launch in 2024, but because of the crash of the

Phobos-Grunt Fobos-Grunt or Phobos-Grunt (russian: link=no, Фобос-Грунт, where ''грунт'' refers to the ''ground'' in the narrow geological meaning of any type of soil or rock exposed on the surface) was an attempted Russian sample return miss ...

spacecraft, the implementation period was postponed to the 2030s. The letter P in ''Mercury-P'', stands for the Russian word 'posadka', meaning landing. ''Mercury-P'' would be the first soft lander on Mercury. A proposed flight scenario for the mission included a flyby of

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never f ...

, the insertion of the spacecraft into the orbit around Mercury and the delivery of a lander on its surface. The Institute of Space Research studied the possibility of "recycling" hardware developed for the Phobos-Grunt, Mars-NET,

Mars-96 Mars 96 (sometimes called Mars-8) was a failed Mars mission launched in 1996 to investigate Mars by the Russian Space Forces and not directly related to the Soviet Mars probe program of the same name. After failure of the second fourth-stage b ...

, and Solar Sail spacecraft, with proposed upgrades of the hardware. , Russian scientists have conducted a preliminary concept study of the project, and compiled a list of the required scientific payload.

References

{{Mercury spacecraft Russian space probes Missions to Mercury Proposed space probes