According to Poleshyuk, the completion of integrated testing would clear the way to the final processing of the spacecraft and its shipment to the Baikonur cosmodrome in September 2009. Poleshyuk vehemently denied existence of any political pressure on him or his team to launch Phobos-Grunt on time and said that he would not hesitate to ground the vehicle which did not go through the full cycle of pre-flight testing set three years ago. "It would not be a tragedy either for the world or for the country," Poleshyuk said. He reminded that a number of Mars missions had been recently postponed.
"If something serious happens during the tests, and I do not exclude that something like that could happen, however now we are preparing for launch... We do have delays with some of 22 scientific instruments, however for the exception of a soil-sampling mechanism they are not critical to the mission," Poleshyuk said, "If some of them are not ready, we can make a decision to drop them, however, as of now, we working toward a complete scientific package onboard."
