Russian Engineers Race to Save Troubled Mars Moon Probe
 

http://www.space.com/13556-russia-sa...ars-probe.html


Note: 09 November 2011 10:38 AM ET (Eastern Time)
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Well that got far. :hmmm:

Mars: The Graveyard of the Solar System. :yep:

It's defecting to America!

Hunt for Red Phobos

All I can do is grunt.

Bet red not black.

It's ironic. The old Soviet Union had an excellent track record for landing probes on Venus (although the corrosive atmosphere did them in pretty quick) but seemed to always fail abysmally with the Red Planet. Now even post-Soviet Russia continues to struggle with the Mars 'Curse.'

http://s3.amazonaws.com/kym-assets/e...jpg?1256781603
Red Phobos standing by...

With the remaining power in the on board batteries the Russian flight engineers figure they have roughly two weeks to figure out the spacecraft's problem and light the candle.

If not, we have to worry about a 28,600 pound piece of scrap metal in a decaying orbit. :88)

This is not just bad news for the Russians, but also for the Chinese as this is carrying their first Mars probe. Methinks they were a bit over ambitious by launching a probe that weighed 13 tonnes, (more than twice the weight of the Cassini-Huygens probe) to get rid of their Mars curse.

One can summarize the news about the last few day's efforts to save Phobos-Grunt in three words: there is none. At least nothing official.

The fact is that neither ESA nor Russia has reported any contact with the spacecraft despite all their efforts. And without any contact with the spacecraft, or official statements from Roscosmos, it's impossible to know whether it's alive or dead, salvageable or about to become another (unusually dangerous) man-made object falling out of the sky at an unknown future time and place. It looks grim for the mission at this point. :cry:

We get signal

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15850516

Main Screen Turn On

When I saw a new post in this thread after having read the news story this morning, these were exactly the words I was expecting to see :haha:

Good luck to them.

Russia is the only hope for space exploration anymore, thanks to Americas incessant need to dismantle any funding that isn't foreign aid, military expediture, corporate/political cronyism.

I am sure Nasa will get back on track, once the patriots in Washington DC finally finish starving out our pensioners, and dropping a deuce on the middle class working man.:)

Don't know if I'd be that cynical. Nasa successfully dispatched the one-ton rover Curiosity on it's way to Mars yesterday. I guess Congress forgot to axe that one.

Meanwhile, more grim news for Phobos-Grunt.

:har::yeah: