Russian Mars Moon Probe Suffers Big Failure After Launch
The Phobos-Grunt spacecraft launched at 3:16 p.m. EST (2016 GMT) Tuesday and was supposed to be on its way to Phobos by now. The probe separated from its Zenit rocket properly, but its own thrusters then failed to fire in order to send the spacecraft streaking toward Mars, Russian officials said.
Russia has a long, long record of Mars probes that have failed. They’ve had lots of good luck with Venus missions, but *terrible* luck with Mars. It’s a damned shame… Phobos-Grunt would not only have gone to Mars, it would have landed on Phobos, taken a sample, and returned it to Earth. This would have been the first sample return mission from anywhere beyond the moon (not counting space-dust capture missions). It seems the Great Galactic Ghoul has struck again.
11 Responses to “Grunt Failed”
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Russians collected an impressive series of failures associated with Mars launches during the last 40 years.
Even if it sounds resonable to have some failures at the early stage of Astronautics (back in early ’60s of XX century) Russians has experienced also embarassing failures like Phobos 1 and 2 as also Mars-96, really difficult to explain, especially if compared with the spectacular successes they had with Venera probes serie on Venus surface (that is indeed a very harsh environment, especially if compared with Mars surface).
I wonder how to say “SGRUNT” in Russian languange…..
After last news Phobos-Grunt spacecraft is park orbit in save mode
they try start the engine on 10 November 6 p.m. until 8 p.m. EST
Phobos-Grunt has ten days until launch, after that the probe reenter earth atmosphere.
So there is still a chance that the Russian’s won’t be the first to reach the monolith on Phobos that Buzz Aldrin highlighted in a TV interview. Since Phobos is hollow (less massive than it should be for its size and density), Elon Musk still has time to pilot a Dragon capsule over there himself, so he could say, “That’s no moon…”.
s/Russian\’s/Russians/
Possessive is not plural. Dobby must be punished!
When I was in elementary school, I read a sci-fi book in which both moons of Mans were hollow. They were camouflaged generation ships of aliens which fled their home star system in fear of the “Black Fleet”. They were about to take over the long-abandoned cities on Mars when human explorers first arrived, so they hid in their tiny “moons” and waited for the humans to return to Earth. Then, the humans discovered that the moons were space ships just as the “Black Fleet” appeared in the outer solar system.
I really enjoyed the book when I was young (I checked out of the library more than once), but I do not recall the title or the author. I’d love to buy a used copy today, if only I could find it…
The Planetary Society is batting well… betting on the Russians. First they splash a solar sail project they spent years building by relying on a Russian launch. Now… they have science project on this probe, and it’s likely to crash back to Earth. Here’s an idea. The Planetary Society should stop using the Russians to launch their stuff.
JimR: didn’t they lose the second sail on American launcher?
All solar sail projects have been doomed ever since some fool killed the Solar Albatross…
I seem to remember that the Russians still rely a lot on event sequencers when it comes to their boosters and spacecraft.
Planetary Society had some insurance on the first Volna failure that they used to place the second Volna in the ocean, IIRC. Russians make pretty decent larger LVs. Their SLBMs are another matter. The Norway spiral was a Bulava failure. Their smallest liquid fueled LVs have the nozzle of the upper stage submerged inside the propellant tank of the first stage, so as to have a more compact missile. They essentially cut the rocket in half on staging.
update for the 12 nov
Phobos-Grunt is death since 72 hours, all attempt to get responds have failed
estimated time for reentry to earth atmosphere december 2
wat happend ?
688 second after launch the Phobos-Grunt separates from second stage enters it park orbit
had 150 minute later the probe engine has to fire and second time 126 minute later
but this never happen
after NORAD the deep-space antenna at Goldstone, California and a European ground station received
incomprehensible telemetry via all available frequencies from P-G after first orbit
in Brazil Media reported that eyewitnesses see flashing light in sky wen P-G past over the Country
If this true that mean that P-G is somersaulted…