Lights are on but nobody is home: Contact lost with Phobos-Grunt spacecraft
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[quote]Efforts are continuing to try to regain control of the Russian Mars mission that is stuck circling the Earth.
The Phobos-Grunt spacecraft was put in orbit on Wednesday, but failed to fire the engine that was designed to take it on to the Red Planet.
Engineers have been using tracking stations around the globe in an attempt to talk to the probe and diagnose its problems - but without success.
Europe has offered Russia its assistance.
The European Space Agency Spacecraft Operations Centre (Esoc) in Darmstadt, Germany, is now involved in trying to establish a link, using its antennas in French Guiana, the Canary Islands and on the Spanish mainland.
The US space agency (Nasa) has also offered to do anything that might bring the wayward craft under full control.
Doug McCuistion, Nasa's director of Mars exploration, told reporters in a briefing about its own forthcoming Red Planet venture, the Curiosity rover: "We have offered assistance and if they need it, we will provide it to the best of our ability."
Phobos-Grunt launched successfully on its Zenit rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and was dropped off into an elliptical orbit with an apogee (farthest point from Earth) of 345km.
It was then expected to initiate two firings on its big cruise stage, one to lift it higher in the sky and the second to despatch it to Mars. Neither burn occurred.
So far, the repeated passes of Phobos-Grunt over ground stations have failed to yield any telemetry.
The Russian Interfax news agency reported a space industry source on Friday as saying: "Several attempts have been made overnight to receive telemetry from the spacecraft. The result of all of them was nothing.
"The chance that the station could be saved is very, very slim," the translation from BBC Monitoring said.
"Russia's ground systems located at Baikonur and near Medvezhyi Ozera near Moscow will join in these efforts in the evening."
The community of citizen satellite trackers has, though, reported Phobos-Grunt to be in a stable orientation.
Michael Murphy from Dayton, Ohio, posted on Friday: "I just observed a pass of Phobos-Grunt and the Zenit second stage.
"The rocket body was tumbling slowly, and the probe itself appeared to be very steady as it passed.
"I did not get good timing information, but the probe was definitely steady. I saw no other objects along the track the probe followed," he told the Phobos-Grunt thread on the SeeSat-L website.
Fellow tracker Ted Molczan from Toronto, Canada, has been trying to determine the precise orbit of Phobos-Grunt around the Earth, and thought on Friday he had seen the craft rise slightly.
"This could all still turn out to be due in some way to spurious [data], but I suspect the effect is real," he told the same thread. "If venting is occurring, perhaps due to leakage from the propellant system, then the spacecraft could eventually begin to tumble."
If control of Phobos-Grunt cannot be re-established, the focus of interest will very rapidly shift to the spacecraft's certain fall to Earth.
Residual air molecules more than 200km above the planet will generate drag on the probe and pull it down faster and faster - although it could be some weeks yet before there is an impact.
The spacecraft weighed some 13 tonnes at launch - double the mass of Nasa's recently re-entered UARS satellite.
What is more, most of the 13 tonnes is made up by the propellants unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) and dinitrogen tetroxide (DTO), both of which are toxic.
It was the presence of a large quantity of toxic propellants on the returning spy satellite USA-193 that the American government used to justify its decision to shoot down the spacecraft with a missile in 2008.[/quote]
[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15698439]**SOURCE**[/url]
Thye know it's there. They can see it with a telescope and it looks okay but electronically it's dead. It's also huge.
I read about this the other day and was hoping they'd fix whatever went wrong. Guess not [img]http://garrysmod.fi/forums/Smileys/Facepunch/emot-saddowns.png[/img]
Where's Isaac Clarke when we need him
Goddamit, is the Great Galactic Ghoul taking a vacation in the Bahamas or something? I mean, generally it has the decency to wait for it's prey to clear earth orbit.
Sad to hear this...this could bring us so much new data..
It's so alone in the void... :(
[QUOTE=Joazzz;33236247]It's so alone in the void... :([/QUOTE]
Reminds me of this.
[IMG]http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/spirit.png[/IMG]
So sad to hear. The mission was quite impressive.
It was supposed to land on the moon Phobos and retrieve a sample from it back to earth and it got delayed for several years. And now this happens...
Reminds me of me playing KSP :v:
Hopefully they can fix it.
Everytime i look at Mars, it reminds me of what Earth may become if most resources (mainly life) are lost. Consumed by whats left of animals and mainly/mostly humanity.
[QUOTE=SonicHitman;33239484]Everytime i look at Mars, it reminds me of what Earth may become if most resources (mainly life) are lost. Consumed by whats left of animals and mainly/mostly humanity.[/QUOTE]
You're looking at the wrong planet.
The one you should be looking at is Venus.
[QUOTE=SonicHitman;33239484]Everytime i look at Mars, it reminds me of what Earth may become if most resources (mainly life) are lost. Consumed by whats left of animals and mainly/mostly humanity.[/QUOTE]
When you look at mars what you should be seeing is what happens when a planet loses its magnetic field.
Damnit Phobos-Grunt, Stop fooling around and get your ass to Mars.
[QUOTE=sHiBaN;33235978]Where's Isaac Clarke when we need him[/QUOTE]
Stuck on my computer screen.
Oh shit,this will start something like metroid.
Okay, I played the shit out of Shores of Hazeron, I learned to fly the space rocket without brakes (I... discovered them much later) and flew a helicopter to the moon of my starting planet.
Obviously, I have the piloting skills needed to get the job done.
What we need to do, for the good of mankind, is to build a goddamn rocket, send me up to space and I'll just turn that son of a bitch on and we'll be heroes! Landing is another issue, I seem to have a problem with atmospheres but that's okay! If I die, I'll be a martyr for science and you guys will still be heroes!
ITT: Space-horror speculation.
how long will it stay in orbit before it's orbit decays and we have another "some space junk is probably going to kill us all in a fiery death" scenario?
Oh damn that sucks.
[QUOTE=jordguitar;33244088]how long will it stay in orbit before it's orbit decays and we have another "some space junk is probably going to kill us all in a fiery death" scenario?[/QUOTE]
Orbital decay will take a few weeks as stated in the article.
The bigger concern however is how dangerous its return would be. Not only is it twice the size of UARS but it's still fully loaded down with fuel.
why is it called Phobos-Grunt, if the Moons of MArs are Phobos and Deimos?
nvm it wasn't named after me
[I]"Phobos-Soil"[/I]
i guess this is what happens when you go cheap? D:
that sucks tho i would have loved to see the stuff they found when they got there
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