Russia Mars probe considered lost: report
A Zenit-2SB rocket, carrying the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, seen here at a launch pad of the Russian leased Kazakhstan's Baikonur cosmodrome early on November 9, just before it's blast off toward Mars. Efforts to resume contact with the spacecraft stuck in Earth orbit after launch have failed and the probe must be considered lost, Interfax news agency reported Saturday.
Efforts to resume contact with a Russian space mission to Mars stuck in Earth orbit after launch have failed and the probe must be considered lost, Interfax news agency reported Saturday.
"All attempts to obtain telemetric information from the Phobos-Grunt probe and activate its command system have failed. The probe must be considered lost," Interfax quoted a source in the Russian space sector as saying.
The source said Russia's space agency would announce the failure of the mission in the next few days.
The space agency had said earlier scientists had a window of only a few days to reprogramme the probe in a bid to send it on its route to Mars. If this does not happen, Phobos-Grunt would fall back to Earth early next month.
The mission went awry after launch Wednesday when the five-billion-ruble ($165 million) probe's engine failed to fire, leaving it orbiting the Earth rather than starting its journey towards the red planet.
The probe had the unprecedented mission to land on the Martian moon Phobos and bring a sample of its rock back to Earth, as well as launch a Chinese Mars satellite.
The mishap caps an inglorious list for Russia's space programme in the 50th anniversary year of Yuri Gagarin's first flight into space.
Three navigation satellites plunged into the sea after a failed launch in December and Russia has since lost new military and telecommunications satellites upon launch.
The accident also comes just days before Russia is due to resume manned space flights to the International Space Station that ground to a halt in August with the crash of a cargo craft.
(c) 2011 AFP
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Rank: 0.2 / 5 (26)
Not lost. Grunt of Mars will return by years end it will.
Hmmmmmm.....
Nov 12, 2011
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Nov 12, 2011
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Fobos-Grunt station carries small amount of radioactive materials too. Radioactive sources are serving for the MIMOS II Mosbauer spectrometer designed for identifying iron and its quantity in the Phobos soil. The half-decay period for Cobalt-57 is around nine months.
An anonymous (expert) source indicated this may force reform in the Russian space agency, Roscosmos. Also, "a number of positions of responsible persons" could face jail time.
Nov 12, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (5)
Russians have lost 14 of 16 mars probes, many ideally suited for asteroid missions. They even lost an (unmanned?) lunar capsule which could actually have sent cosmonauts on a suicide mission to save the mother planet.
Nov 12, 2011
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Nov 12, 2011
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Government is inherently untrustworthy since it is composed of people.
That is why elected government was invented.
The underlying principle here is that the people are smart enough to elect reasonable representatives.
In America this is no longer the case for the Conservative Component of the Population.
Nov 12, 2011
Rank: 2 / 5 (4)
The fuel (hydrazine) and the oxidizer (nitrogen tetroxide) are NOT in a frozen state at this time, but scientists are presently worried that the two very toxic propellants, while orbiting the Earth, will freeze, and when the probe falls to Earth, the frozen propellants will NOT burn up, but stay frozen until they land. In which case, they will contaminate whatever they come into contact.
While they are liquid, they could burn once the probe's orbit has decayed and the whole thing starts to burn in the atmosphere.
Here's the link to the most pertinent article that tells all: http://www.physor...bit.html
Nov 12, 2011
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Nov 13, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (2)
This from: http://www.physor...obe.html
Nov 14, 2011
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Nov 14, 2011
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http://www.greatd...asus.htm
Hint - DARPA did not invent the tardis :P