Phobos-Grunt Mars Moon Probe Stuck In Earth's Orbit

MOSCOW -- Russian officials on Tuesday acknowledged that the chances of fixing a space probe bound for a moon of Mars that got stuck in Earth's orbit are close to zero, Russian news agencies reported.

The unmanned $170 million Phobos-Ground was launched two weeks ago and reached preliminary Earth orbit, but its engines never fired to send it off to the Red Planet. Russian engineers have been trying to retrieve data from the probe as it passes over their territory but haven't established contact.

"We have to be realistic. Since we haven't been able to get in touch with it for such a long time, chances to accomplish the mission are very slim," Roscosmos deputy chief Vitaly Davydov said in remarks carried by the Interfax news agency.

Davydov said that Russian engineers can keep trying until the end of the month to fix the probe's engines to steer it to its path to Phobos, one of Mars' two moons.

Russian scientists could fix the problem if the probe failed because of a software flaw, but some experts think that the failure was rooted in hardware that's difficult to fix.

The failure of the probe could see Russia change its priorities in space research. The Russian space agency will more likely focus on Moon research instead of studying Mars, Davydov said.

The failed spacecraft is 13.2 metric tons (14.6 tons), and most of that weight, about 11 metric tons (12 tons), is highly toxic fuel.

Davydov said Tuesday that Phobos-Ground could crash to Earth some time between late December and late February. The site of the crash cannot be established more than a day in advance, he said.

Davydov insisted that "if you calculate the probability of it hitting somebody on the head, it is close to zero."

A satellite tracking website showed the Mars probe passing over North America on Tuesday morning Moscow time.

Comments

[White Raven]

06:57 AM on 11/23/2011

There's just something about missions to Mars that makes them fail a lot. Strange.

[Chase Price]

01:59 AM on 11/23/2011

fix it

[Bill Cumming]

10:13 PM on 11/22/2011

Latest reports are saying that the craft is actually INCREASING in altitude.
They don't have any telemetry from the craft but radar is showing that the craft is not falling but gaining slightly.
2 theories:
1) the atmosphere is thick enough for it's solar panels to act as wings so raising it slowly.
2) their is a leak in propellent pushing the craft into a higher orbit.

Either way it's only temporary, it pushes the impact time forward 4 to 8 weeks from initial estimates.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/22/phobos_grunt_rising_orbit/

[glassbender]

04:42 PM on 11/22/2011

you have to admit one thing,the shuttle was / is one hell of a machine / spacecraft / spaceplane

[ThinkCreeps]

06:41 PM on 11/22/2011

Indeed. 1 death per 10 flights. Quite the ride.

Nice engines. Expensive, but nice.

[SouthStJo]

09:42 PM on 11/22/2011

Dont have to admit that at all.
The shuttle was a step backwards in a lot of ways, and I'm glad NASA is moving on to other things.

[abuckley23]

04:31 PM on 11/22/2011

So the russians lost a rocket full of food and supplies for the international space station and now they've lost a probe? Maybe we should be looking at other countries for space travel options? Just a thought...

[frank day]

03:43 PM on 11/22/2011

Lost...In....Space

[WhereIsTheTruth]

11:35 PM on 11/22/2011

Pigs...In...Space! (In honor of the new Muppet movie, of course!)

[jsgaetano]

02:24 PM on 11/22/2011

In Soviet Russia, satellite... um... I got nothin'.

[eddy joe]

02:11 PM on 11/22/2011

It would be nice to have a craft to send , and check it out. Something like the ...space shuttle?

[jsgaetano]

02:25 PM on 11/22/2011

Space Shuttle is a worse option than sending people up by rocket. Always has been. How many rocket missions blew up on re-entry?

[eddy joe]

04:58 PM on 11/22/2011

Rocket missions cannot do what the shuttle did. Anyway...how many man equipped rockets do we have ready to go? The russians?

[eddy joe]

03:23 PM on 11/23/2011

Whatever you say jsgaetano...I give up. We'll just send our astronauts via russia...until they start blowing up upon launch. Then we won't be in space, anymore.

[jsarets]

02:29 PM on 11/22/2011

Yes, let's send a human crew on a $500M launch of a $2B orbiter to possibly save a $160M robotic spacecraft with which we have no communications and no engineering insight into whether it may be venting toxic propellant and which has no grapple fixture for the robotic arm to capture. That sounds like a great idea. It sounds as fantastic in theory and as misguided in practice as the Space Shuttle itself.

[NHBill]

04:40 PM on 11/22/2011

bravo

[eddy joe]

04:56 PM on 11/22/2011

As usual with most people, you have missed the point. In the event that it became neccessary to repair some satellite, to save our country, or even possibly the world, we no longer have the capability. Fewer options are not a good thing. What will replace the shuttle, that can repair all of the satellites, and the space station? Will we just let them fall from space? Without options, there are no solutions.

[bryanzth]

01:26 PM on 11/22/2011

You can make something 90% reliable, but it's that 10% that's the problem if it's not fixable. BZ.

[HighDesertBob]

01:04 PM on 11/22/2011

Any space venture has risks. The US found this out when they first launched the Hubble Telescope. They did component testing but failed to do full system integration testing and found the unit didn't work properly when it was in orbit. I don't know id this is what happened here, but budget constraints can cause people to take shortcuts and eliminated redundant safeguards to ensure their mission is successful. It all comes down to money.

[jsarets]

01:57 PM on 11/22/2011

The flaw in Hubble's mirror should have been identified during component testing. In fact, it was detected during component testing. The primary instrument used to guide the production process was incorrectly assembled. The company which produced the mirror (Perkin-Elmer) used two secondary instruments to verify the quality of the mirror, both of which correctly detected the spherical aberration. But Perkin-Elmer erroneously concluded that these secondary instruments were less accurate than the primary instrument and disregarded the negative test results.

Your speculation about Phobos-Grunt, however, may prove accurate (especially if the fault is software-related). Mission planners decided to equip the spacecraft with antennas designed to communicate at long range with the deep-space X-band tracking station in Baikonur and chose not to equip it with antennas which could communicate with S-band tracking stations from earth orbit. T

The comm system design assumed that the spacecraft would execute its injection into Mars transfer orbit as per the automated flight program and would not require any communications with the ground until it after it deployed its long-range X-band antennas. Mission planners acknowledged and accepted that there would be a communications blackout in earth orbit.

The alternative would have been to add another comm system just for the brief window between spacecraft separation and earth departure, adding cost, complexity, and mass to the spacecraft. So they tried do without, and it ended up biting them.

This is part of the reason why NASA's Mars missions typically use the upper stage of the launch vehicle to perform the earth departure burn. The upper stage has to be able to communicate with the ground from earth orbit anyway, and its comm system doesn't add mass to the spacecraft.

But this mission profile is problematic for Russia because they launch over land from Baikonur and have to drop their lower stages on unpopulated areas. If they inject a lighter spacecraft into a faster orbit, then the rocket stages fall downrange of specified drop zones and possibly on China. We don't have that problem because we launch over the Atlantic Ocean.

[jsgaetano]

02:27 PM on 11/22/2011

((But Perkin-Elm­er erroneousl­y concluded that these secondary instrument­s were less accurate than the primary instrument and disregarde­d the negative test results.)) - The joys of getting your components from the lowest bidder!

[Power-I]

11:43 AM on 11/22/2011

Well let's see. They can't figure out how to get its engines to fire towards Mars, why would I trust that they can correctly calculate the odds of it hitting me in the head?

[DXM]

02:36 PM on 11/22/2011

Calculating the odds of getting hit in the head are a lot easier and more straightforward than trying to remotely fix an errant piece of space hardware.

[Power-I]

03:04 PM on 11/22/2011

Well, my comment was that they couldn't figure out how to properly get the engines to work in the first place, not that they couldn't fix it, now that it is up in space. But, thanks for the insight I guess...