Posted 11.23.2011 at 12:00 pm
9 Comments
The Phobos-Grunt That Wasn't
A Roscosmos rendering of Phobos-Grunt approaching Mars and its moon Phobos.
Roscosmos
Finally, Russia’s Phobos-Grunt spacecraft has called home. The European Space Agency has confirmed that Roscosmos’ marooned spacecraft--stuck in Earth orbit after a failed booster firing failed to set it on a course for Mars earlier this month--made contact with an ESA tracking station in Perth, Australia, yesterday. But no telemetry data was exchanged in the brief contact, and the prospects for the mission are still next to hopeless.
A quick primer: Phobos-Grunt launched on November 8 from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome and found Earth orbit as intended. But two booster firings were supposed to send the 29,000-pound spacecraft on a course for Mars, where it would drop off a Chinese orbiter at the Red Planet before finding its way to Mars’ moon Phobos. Neither firing happened, and the window to correct the problem and recover the mission is swiftly closing.
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Technology, Clay Dillow, Mars, phobos-grunt, roscosmos, Space, space missionsStill, hopes aren’t high for the troubled mission. No meaningful data was swapped the first time and there’s no telling if any telemetry data will be swapped tonight if indeed Perth can reestablish contact. If mission handlers can’t get an idea of what’s going on aboard Phobos-Grunt, they can’t fix the problem. And if the mission isn’t rescued, Phobos-Grunt will likely make an uncontrolled reentry as early as late December or January, with some parts of the spacecraft perhaps surviving and plunging all the way to Earth. Which seems to be happeninga lot lately.
[SPACE]
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Russias Radio Base station:
Sir, every time I connect to the probe, it begins to connect and I get this reply message?
" Please deposit another .25 cents for the next 3 minutes. "
Then it just disconnets???!
...............................
I am just so Qurious!
Picturing Ollie Williams from Family Guy in the background screaming "Did ya check your tcp/ip settin's?"
Don't take life to seriously! You'll never get out of it alive.
-Elbert Hubbard
Fingers crossed.
Dang Nab bit! Steal my Grunt Probe out of my garage and launch in space, you thieving Russians.
Well, I bet you never guess I can turn on and off as I like, remotely. So there, lol!!!
Wait until I see it's in the right place of orbit, I will fire up the old rocket engines and send it flying of in space, ha ha ha!
In Russia, Probes Call You!
How funny. The Russians are sitting by the radio phone and wishing for Phobos-Grunt to phone home. You know the Extra Terrestrial to phone home. Now that is just fun! I love it!
E.T. Phone home! lol
God Bless and Good Luck on your holiday of Thanks Giving! Love your Family Bunches!
the space transport system will sucessfully be put in operation even if the STS has lost the space path at the mars space but the 40m anteena at austallia is technically on with the safe connection end
I can't believe it took them nearly 3 weeks to figure out that they could point a wide-beam antenna at the sky instead of trying to precisely track the damn thing. I understand that they have to make this up as they go along, but still...