This issue describes the MARS-96 robotic spacecraft scientific mission to Mars prepared according to the Federal Program of Space Exploration developed by the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Space Agency.

The Mars 96 spacecraft was launched from Baikonur on 16 November 1996. The spacecraft was not inserted into the interplanetary trajectory to Mars due to a malfunction in the Block-D (the third stage of the rocket) and during the third revolution around the Earth the spacecraft reentered the Earth's atmosphere and fell into the Pacific Ocean.

Information was provided by Space Research Institute, Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytic Chemistry, Lavochkin Research Association, Keldysh Applied Mathematics Institute, Flight Control Center and the Mars-96 scientific experiment teams.