DocM Posted November 26, 2011 Share Posted November 26, 2011 Russia's President Medvedev is threatening prosecutions - http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7AP0FI20111126 As they say, the floggings will continue until morale improves :p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neoadorable Posted November 28, 2011 Author Share Posted November 28, 2011 unless there was real negligence, punishing people will only serve to drive more talent away. but isn't PG showing good signs of health? there's still hope for this mission from what i gather. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted November 28, 2011 Share Posted November 28, 2011 Not really. The comms have been sporadic and the Mars window has closed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted December 3, 2011 Share Posted December 3, 2011 "It's dead, Jim" The European Space Agency is shutting down their attempts to monitor Phobos-Grunt, and rumors are that the Russian Space Agency will announce its failure within the next couple of weeks. http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Operations/SEMNEO2XFVG_0.html 2 December 2011In consultation and agreement with Phobos-Grunt mission managers, ESA engineers will end tracking support today. Efforts in the past week to send commands to and receive data from the Russian Mars mission via ESA ground stations have not succeeded; no response has been seen from the satellite. ESA teams remain available to assist the Phobos-Grunt mission if indicated by any change in the situation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted December 4, 2011 Share Posted December 4, 2011 The orbit is decaying, and some small size objects drifted away from P-G on Nov. 29th and were cataloged by USSTRATCOM (the United States Strategic Command.) Not a good sign. http://satobs.org/se...volution_v1.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neoadorable Posted December 6, 2011 Author Share Posted December 6, 2011 so now she's literally falling apart? :cry: man, this is horrible, it went so wrong! i had so many hopes for PG....i still don't want to have anyone's head on a plate, it's not fair, those guys tried with what they have. but why did it have to come to this? i really feel sad for the China Space Agency folks, their first interplanetary mission gone because of Russian incompetence... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted December 6, 2011 Share Posted December 6, 2011 To be honest, Russia really bolluxed this one up. First, they didn't budget enough money to build 2 P-G's - one to launch and the other for ground tests if necessary. This is a common practice. Second, the vast majority of it was new - very little in the way of proven hardware. The propulsion module appears to have failed, and it was a first-ever mod of an existing FREGAT state. Third, it appears one of the antennas was partially blocked by the modded FREGAT so signals couldn't reach it in the orbital position. Fourth, they should have delayed launch because the new computers had never run more than 6 hours on the bench without locking up. This would have meant not beating Curiosity to launch, but might have saved the mission. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neoadorable Posted December 10, 2011 Author Share Posted December 10, 2011 these are horrible oversights...how can you launch a mission where the computers weren't even properly tested? and indeed why wasn't there a backup? they paid so little for PG, might as well build two or three. cheap and cheerful isn't the way to space, sadly. i am really saddened by this. and you're right, they were probably eager to go before Curiosity...silly and in hindsight such a waste. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted December 10, 2011 Share Posted December 10, 2011 The other advantage of having a backup spacecraft besides diagnostics is you can mod it to fix the suspected issues then try to launch again when the next launch window opens up, but sadly Russia doesn't have that option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neoadorable Posted December 14, 2011 Author Share Posted December 14, 2011 can they still build a new PG for 2013? with their low budgets i'm sure they can...they were able to theoretically mount a very complex mission for $130 million. of course it didn't work...but i imagine two years will be enough to put together a duplicate mission. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 Their Mars efforts are going to need serious reassessing. A Discovery Class Mars mission like PG is now recognized as a one beyond their current capabilities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neoadorable Posted December 16, 2011 Author Share Posted December 16, 2011 it's definitely not beyond their capabilties Doc, don't say that. they just didn't budget it properly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted December 16, 2011 Share Posted December 16, 2011 Sadly, that 's incorrect. They never developed a Silicon Valley of their own which has severely hurt their electronics capabilities - including the ability to produce radiation hardened chips which are essential for Mars and long planetary missions to Jupiter, Saturn etc. They also couldn't obtain it outside because of ITAR regulations which our allies follow. ITAR = International Traffic in Arms Regulations. For a long time they couldn't even import consumer level computers. This was emphasized when one of their advanced aircraft was obtained by the US and found to still have vacuum tube equipment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neoadorable Posted December 19, 2011 Author Share Posted December 19, 2011 with all the tech sharing and outright spying going on, i find that hard to believe Doc! i put this on human incompetence and lack of funding rather then plain old insufficient technology. and if any trade restrictions are indeed getting in the way, then it's time for more cooperation. old national grudges disrupting the future of humanity is never a good thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeta_immersion Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 ..... This was emphasized when one of their advanced aircraft was obtained by the US and found to still have vacuum tube equipment. really? now, is vaccum tube susceptible to radiation more than cpu's? (I guessing yes for obvious reasons) .... radiation hardened chips are special in design or just reg chips with a radiation shield on them (or something to that nature?) felt bad for loosing such an instrument ... all that money in flames ... however, the russians need to put their sh_t together because they have the will but lack planning Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 Vacuum tubes were used in high power circuits like the radar because they didn't have solid state devices able to handle the power required. In terms of radiation hardness - tubes are better but more fragile to G loading etc. Modern solid state devices like in guided artillery shells can handle 10,000 G when it's fired The problems Russia had getting modern electronic parts externally was because of the COCOM and later ITAR export controls. Not only couldn't they get modern circuit parts, but the tooling and tech used to make silicon wafers and such were also embargoed. They had to roll their own, and are still catching up. This limited the accuracy of their warheads, efforts to miniaturize their rockets & satellites, and ability to simulate new weapon designs. These "dual-use" technologies covered parts, computers (IIRC even consumer items like the Amiga), telecommunications gear, manufacturing equipment, chemical equipment, oil & gas industry equipment etc etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted December 23, 2011 Share Posted December 23, 2011 Predicted Reentry Time: 25 DEC 2011 @ 00:26 UTC ? 13 hours Where: over the northwestern coast of South America 2 orbits before the prediction it'd come down around the US East coast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neoadorable Posted December 28, 2011 Author Share Posted December 28, 2011 well, i haven't been keeping up with current events much since Xmas, where is she now? has she crashed? :cry: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted December 28, 2011 Share Posted December 28, 2011 Looking like ~ Jan 12-16, maybe. It seems to change daily. With it tunbling anything could happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neoadorable Posted December 31, 2011 Author Share Posted December 31, 2011 no :cry: so it's not even going to be a dignified ending...why can't Russia intercept her? the risk of contamination is too great? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted December 31, 2011 Share Posted December 31, 2011 They have ZERO control over it, and the only intervention now possible would be to destroy it with an antisatellite weapon (ASAT) like the US Aegis SM-3 or whatever Russia or China have. The problem with that is it would create several metric tons of space junk. USSTRATCOM (US Strategic Command) is now estimating Jan 15th. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neoadorable Posted January 3, 2012 Author Share Posted January 3, 2012 no more debris! ok, just let her come in for that final tumble home...we failed you PG, us humans were not up to the task, just come back where and when you can :cry: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted January 8, 2012 Share Posted January 8, 2012 Updated telescope images and video courtesy of astrophotographerThierry Legault. http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/phobos-grunt.html PB has dropped >10 km in 10 days. Looking like Jan 15th for reentry, perhaps a bit sooner. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 OK, the Phobos-Grunt blame game is officially going off the tracks.... Izvestia Story (in Russian).... Russian Space Web (English summary).... January 9In an interview to the Izvestiya daily published on January 9, the head of the Russian space agency, Vladimir Popovkin finally admitted a number of critical flaws in the organization and design of the Phobos-Grunt mission, about which observers had warned all along and which the agency had vehemently denied in the past and attempted to punish few journalists who had exposed these problems. At the same time, Popovkin defended the fateful decision to launch the spacecraft, portraying the current leadership of the agency as a hostage of bad decisions in the past. "Phobos-Grunt was developed and built under conditions of limited funding, which predetermined risky technical decisions and made the whole mission problematic," Popovkin said, "We became hostages of these decisions, since we had been bound by agreements with the European Space Agency (ESA), whose instruments were onboard, and with Chinese colleagues, whose satellite we had committed to carry to Mars. In addition, the spacecraft was under construction for a very long time and warranties and operational lifetimes of many components were approaching their limits. If we missed the 2011 launch window for the flight to Mars, we would simply had to throw away the spacecraft and write off five billion rubles of investments (into the project)." It should be noted that numerous officials involved in the Phobos-Grunt project contradict Popovkin's statements about luck of funding for the project, at least in the past several years. Also, the most problematic part of the project and a likely culprit in its ultimate demise -- the flight control system, BKU -- was a result of engineering and management incompetence rather then funding. Finally, it is unlikely that agreements with ESA would prevent the delay of the mission from 2011, if real status of the project was honestly communicated to international partners. Numerous international participants in the project repeatedly said that Russian space officials had assured them in the readiness of the spacecraft for launch in 2011. It is also obvious, that replacing some out-of-warranty components would be much better decision than launching a doomed mission. Yet, Popovkin went even further and repeated a really bizarre accusation which had been previously made by at least one high-ranking Russian military officer about a possible sabotage of the Phobos-Grunt mission by foreign powers, hence by the United States. "Today there is no clarity, why the propulsion unit onboard Phobos-Grunt failed to start, Popovkin told Izvestiya. It is also unclear, why our satellites often have failures at the time when they fly out of range (or Russian ground control) where we don't see the vehicle and do not receive telemetry from it. There is no wish to accuse anybody, but today there are very powerful means of influence on spacecraft and the possibility of their use can not be excluded." +Mirumir 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neoadorable Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 Popovkin needs to step the hell down after allowing such insane accusation to fly around, and actually sort of supporting them himself. is he an idiot or what? that's no way for a scientist to talk. thanks for posting the video and pics, so gorgeous but so disheartening to watch her waste away like that... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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