Tag Archives: Phobos-Grunt

Phobos-Grunt Descends into Pacific

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Failed Russian Mars Probe Crashes Into Pacific Ocean: Reports

Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer
Date: 15 January 2012 Time: 08:58 PM ET

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Experts predict that Russia's failed Mars probe Phobos-Grunt will crash back to Earth in mid-January 2012. This artist's concept shows fuel burning from a ruptured fuel tank as the spacecraft re-enters the atmosphere.
Experts predict that Russia’s failed Mars probe Phobos-Grunt will crash back to Earth in mid-January 2012. This artist’s concept shows fuel burning from a ruptured fuel tank as the spacecraft re-enters the atmosphere.
CREDIT: Michael Carroll

A failed Russian Mars probe came crashing back to Earth Sunday (Jan. 15) in a death plunge over the Pacific Ocean, according to Russian news reports.

After languishing in Earth orbit for more than two months, the 14.5-tonPhobos-Grunt spacecraft fell at around 12:45 p.m. EST (1745 GMT) Sunday, apparently slamming into the atmosphere over a stretch of the southern Pacific off the coast of Chile, Russian officials told the Ria Novosti news agency.

“Phobos-Grunt fragments have crashed down in the Pacific Ocean,” Alexei Zolotukhin, an official with Russia’s Defense Ministry, was quoted by Ria Novosti as saying. Zolotukhin said that the spacecraft crashed about 776 miles (1,250 kilometers) west of the island of Wellington, the news agency reported.

Before the crash, Russia’s Federal Space Agency, known as Roscosmos, released a map that estimated a potential crash zone in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean sometime between 12:50 p.m. and 1:34 p.m. EST (1750-1834 GMT) on Sunday.

The huge probe likely broke apart as it re-entered, with the vast majority of the pieces burning up in the atmosphere, but some big componets were expected to survive the fiery fall. At the moment, it’s not clear how many chunks of Phobos-Grunt survived, or exactly where this hail of hardy debris touched down.

Roscosmos had estimated that 20 to 30 chunks of Phobos-Grunt, weighing a total of no more than 440 pounds (200 kilograms), might hit the Earth’s surface. Officials also stressed that the probe’s huge reservoir of toxic fuel would burn up high over Earth. [Photos of the Phobos-Grunt mission]

While it can be tough for observers in the West to vet such claims from the Russians, fears that Phobos-Grunt’s fall would cause dangerous chemicals to rain from the sky are probably unfounded, experts say.

“They did acknowledge early on that the [fuel] tanks are made of aluminum,” Nick Johnson, chief scientist of NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, told SPACE.com. “Aluminum rarely survives re-entry, so there’s no reason to really doubt them.”

Russian officials have also repeatedly stated that there’s little danger of contamination from a tiny amount of radioactive material onboard Phobos-Grunt, about 10 micrograms of Cobalt-57 that forms part of a science instrument on the craft.

Failed mission to Mars

The crash marked a dramatic end to Phobos-Grunt’s brief and troubled life. The $165 million probe launched Nov. 8 on a mission to collect soil samples from the Martian moon Phobos and send them back to Earth in a return capsule (“grunt” means “soil” in Russian).

Phobos-Grunt’s main engines were supposed to fire shortly after liftoff to send the spacecraft on its way to the Red Planet. That never happened, however, and the probe got stuck in Earth orbit.

An artist's concept of the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft nearing the Martian moon Phobos, something the failed probe never got to do.
An artist’s concept of the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft nearing the Martian moon Phobos, something the failed probe never got to do.
CREDIT: Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos)

Russian officials still aren’t sure what went wrong. They hinted recently that some form of sabotage may be responsible for Phobos-Grunt’s problems, and perhaps for the other four embarrassing space failures Russia suffered in 2011 as well.

Phobos-Grunt was also carrying China’s first attempt at a Mars orbiter, along with an experiment run by the United States-based Planetary Society designed to study how a long journey through deep space affects micro-organisms.

China wrote off its orbiter, a tiny craft called Yinghuo-1, as a total loss in mid-November. But the Planetary Society has said that its project — the Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment, or LIFE — may survive re-entry, since it was tucked inside Phobos-Grunt’s return capsule.

It may even be possible to salvage some science out of LIFE, researchers say, but only if the return capsule survives and is recovered.

The sky is falling

Phobos-Grunt’s fall may add to a growing perception that the sky is falling, for it was the third uncontrolled re-entry of a big spacecraft in the last four months.

NASA’s 6.5-ton UARS satellite came down in September, and the 2.7-ton German satellite ROSAT followed one month later. Both crashed over stretches of empty ocean, causing no casualites. (Nobody is known to have ever been injured by a piece of man-made space debris.)

While they’re temporally linked, the three spacecraft falls differ in significant ways. UARS and ROSAT, for example, were decommissioned satellites that finished their science work years ago and then spiraled downward in slowly decaying orbits. Phobos-Grunt, by contrast, lived fast and died young without accomplishing its mission.

Also, Phobos-Grunt was much heavier than either UARS or ROSAT. At 14.5 tons, the Russian Mars probe was the most massive satellite to fall uncontrolled to Earth since NASA’s 85-ton Skylab space station in 1979.

Russia’s 135-ton Mir space station remains the largest single man-made object to re-enter our atmosphere. Engineers de-orbited Mir in a controlled fashion in 2001.

This article was provided by SPACE.com, a sister site to LiveScience

from:    http://www.livescience.com/17924-phobos-grunt-crashed-ocean.html

 

Russian Mars Probe to Fall to Earth

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Where Will Doomed Russian Mars Probe Fall?

Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer
Date: 13 January 2012 Time: 06:25 PM ET

 

phobos grunt roscosmos reentry chart
This graphic, published by the Russian space agency Roscosmos, shows where the failed Mars probe Phobos-Grunt could crash to Earth. The arrow points to a possible re-entry site on Sunday, Jan. 15.
CREDIT: Roscosmos

A huge hunk of Russian space junk is set to crash to Earth in the next few days, but nobody knows exactly when or where it’s going to come down.

The 14.5-ton Mars probe Phobos-Grunt, which got stuck in Earth orbit shortly after its Nov. 8 launch, may re-enter the atmosphere at 11:22 a.m. EST (1622 GMT) on Sunday (Jan. 15), according to the latest estimate published today (Jan. 13) by Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency.

If that projection is accurate, pieces of the failed spacecraft will splash into the Atlantic Ocean about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) south of Buenos Aires.

But that’s a big if.

Uncertain predictions

The predicted time and place of re-entry could change in the future, Roscosmos said. Indeed, the newest estimate is substantially different from two others the space agency issued earlier in the week, which had the probe coming down earlier on Sunday and falling into the Indian Ocean off the coast of Java or near Madagascar. [Photos of the Phobos-Grunt mission]

Further, other organizations and observers tracking Phobos-Grunt have their own estimates, some of which roughly agree with Roscosmos’ predictions and some of which have the probe crashing later, perhaps early Monday morning (Jan. 16).

So all we know for certain right now is that Phobos-Grunt will fall to Earth soon, somewhere between 51.4 degrees north latitude and 51.4 degrees south latitude — a stretch of the planet ranging from London in the north to the Falkland Islands in the south.

And the predictions won’t really start firming up until shortly before the probe’s fall, experts say.

“About two hours out, the U.S. military will publish their last re-entry prediction, and that will likely be the most accurate public prediction, as they have very accurate data on the object’s orbit that will not be available publicly,” said Brian Weeden, a technical adviser with the Secure World Foundation and a former orbital analyst with the Air Force.

“Up until then, I would take any prediction with a large grain of salt,” Weeden told SPACE.com in an email.

Most of probe should burn up

Most of Phobos-Grunt’s weight consists of toxic fuel, prompting some concern that its crash could spread dangerous chemicals over populated or environmentally sensitive areas. But Roscosmos officials have said that the fuel will burn up high in Earth’s atmosphere.

The vast majority of Phobos-Grunt should meet the same fate, according to Roscosmos. The space agency estimates that no more than 20 to 30 pieces of the probe, weighing a total of less than 440 pounds (200 kilograms), will reach the ground.

While it’s tough to vet these claims, they’re likely to be fairly accurate, Weeden said.

“Since they have the most data on its construction and design, I don’t think anyone else is in a position at this point to contradict them,” he said. “And their statement is reasonable and consistent with what normally happens.”

At this point, the world may be getting rather accustomed to giant pieces of metal falling from the sky. Phobos-Grunt’s crash will be the third uncontrolled re-entry of a big spacecraft in the last four months, following NASA’s defunct UARS satellite in September and the dead German ROSAT satellite in October.

Nobody on the ground was hurt by UARS or ROSAT debris. In fact, no one is known to have ever been injured by a chunk of man-made space junk.

The $165 million Phobos-Grunt spacecraft launched Nov. 8 on a mission to collect soil samples from the Mars moon Phobos and send them back to Earth (“grunt” means “soil” in Russian). Shortly after liftoff, however, the probe’s engines failed to fire as planned to send it on a path toward the Red Planet.

Russian officials still aren’t sure what caused the failure, though they recently raised the possibility that some sort of sabotage may be responsible.

This story was provided by SPACE.com, a sister site to LiveScience.

from:    http://www.livescience.com/17917-russia-spacecraft-phobos-grunt-crash-predictions.html