Phobos-Grunt: a frightening history


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A frightening bit of Phobos-Grunt history by Russian space historian Anatoly Zak of RussianSpaceWeb.com. Truly scary, and it makes one wonder about the true safety of the rest of their program once new hardware is involved.

Update: 2 pieces have broken off P-G and some observers think it's tumbling.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/phobos_grunt_2011.html

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The fueling of the probe's cruise stage with pressurized gas and propellant components was completed sometimes before October 27 and the Chinese YH-1 micro-satellite was also fueled around the same time. The fueling of the Earth return vehicle was scheduled for October 27 and was confirmed as completed on November 1. In the meantime, the MDU propulsion unit was integrated with the transfer section, which served as an interface between the spacecraft and the second stage of the Zenit-2SB rocket.

Final tests uncover serious problems

On November 1, inside the MIK-31-40 assembly building, joint industrial teams had conducted tests of opening of the probe's solar panels, Roskosmos said, without much details. However only after the launch of the ill-fated mission, not unexpected stories started surfacing about numerous problems which had been uncovered during final tests in Baikonur.

As it transpired, engineers found that the polarity for the steering control of the main engine had been mistakenly switched over in the flight control software of the main BKU computer. Nobody knew how such a major problem could've been missed during supposedly thorough certification tests in Moscow. Initially, managers decided to limit corrective actions to re-soldering of respective cables. As a result, six cables had to be reconnected on a spacecraft fully loaded with toxic and explosive propellants. Similar attempts to do electric repairs on the fueled vehicle led to the mass loss of life in Baikonur in the aftermath of the infamous Nedelin disaster in 1960.

However, after these repairs, it had become clear that all control signals from multiple cables had been channeled to the same driving mechanism. This mistake could not be fixed by re-routing cables, instead requiring complex changes in the flight control software. Last updates to the programming software had to be added right at the launch site, leaving no time for a new round of tests. The incident was reported to the head of the Russian space agency, Vladimir Popovkin. (534)

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Official: It's dead, Jim....

December 8, 2011

Dear Colleagues,

As you may already know, the launch of the Phobos-Soil spacecraft was a failure. On November 8, 2011 the spacecraft was put into the near Earth orbit, however, the booster did not turn on, and, therefore, the spacecraft did not manage to change this initial orbit and transfer to the interplanetary trajectory. The reason of this failure has not been determined yet.

Immediately after this unpredictable event all forces of the mission control team were concentrated in order to attempt to establish communication with the spacecraft. Several foreign organizations, in particular, ESOC-ESA, DSN-JPL-NASA, NORAD-STRATCOM, numerous amateur observers tracked the spacecraft to establish communication with it and determine parameters of the orbit, its orientation and attitude. However, despite people being at work 24 / 7 since the launch, all these attempts have not yield any satisfactory results. We are grateful to our foreign colleagues, who provided us with every list of information about the spacecraft which was crucial at the time.

Currently, the spacecraft is rotating [tumbling] at the near Earth orbit, lowering every day, and we expect that it is to entry the atmosphere in several weeks. Lavochkin Association specialists will continue their attempts to establish connection with the spacecraft and send commands until the very end of its existence. We are working nevertheless on the issue of re-entry and probability of where and which fragments may hit the ground (if any). There is a sensitive matter that one of the scientific instruments (Messbauer spectrometer) contains radioactive material Co-57. However, the amount of Co-57 is about few (less than 10) micrograms, so that, according to our evaluations, no significant problems are is anticipated.

At present, the next steps of the Russian space science program on the Solar system exploration are being discussed. In accordance with the current plans, the next missions are Luna-Glob and Luna-Resource. As another possible additional step, at the moment ROSCOSMOS, ESA and NASA are discussing the collaboration on the ExoMars and Russian Mars-NET missions. Moreover, the Russian Academy of Sciences would like to prepare a new mission to Phobos. However, no decision has not been taken yet.

We would like to express our deep gratitude to You and all the scientists and specialists for collaboration on the Phobos-Soil Mission, preparation of scientific instruments and provision of ground support. We are deeply sorry about the failure of the Phobos-Soil Mission. We hope in future to continue our collaboration on space science projects.

Academician Lev Zelenyi

Director, Space Research Institute

Chair, Solar system exploration Board

The Russian Academy of Sciences

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:cry: why why did this happen? how could they be so incompetent? these are scientists and well trained engineers! they sound like some of the MIS people where i work!

i'm glad they're already thinking ahead and planning a new mission to Phobos, but it will have to be a damn good one to make the bitter memory of PG go away. actually, you will never be forgotten, Phobos-Grunt, us humans failed you!

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agree the incompetence will need to be aggressively treated, like the sickness that it is. the penicilin in this case is sadly money. people who are underpaid and always on the brink of moving to another agency/country in search of a better paycheck will not perform well. better funding will cure Roscosmos of these shorcomings.

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again, this is because of lacking funding. the politicos and the public don't want to pay, so the science and engineering guys have to make do and cobble together makeshift missions and rush jobs that are bound to have more issues than if they were properly budgeted. this isn't because it's Mars, the first expeditions across the Atlantic and Zheng He's voyages were also very so-so in the results department, all because of a lack of political and fiscal will.

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I don't want to be one of those conspiracy nut jobs but the Russians do seem to have a very long run of knackered Mars missions.

I have it in my head that their manned stuff is safer than the US but the US does seem to keep beating them in the Mars race.

From reading the above it does sound like they are just shooting themselves in the foot though.Just can't understand why they have a good record in one but not the other.

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Missions to orbit are easier, of short duration, you can use a standardized vehicle and flights are modtly within the Earth 's magnetosphere which affords some protection from solar flares if not the inner Van Allen belt.

The trouble with Russia's deep space program comes down to underfunding, poor design, an evolving quality control problem*, and electronics that are not radiation hardened enough for long or deep space missions. Then thrre are the operational issues of launching before the spacecraft hardware and software have been thoroughly vetted.

* the multiple failures last year, several problems over the last decade with Soyuz causing re-entry difficulties etc. are all quality control issues.

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Doc is right, launching a mission of this magnitude with the computers having run for only six hours with not even properly simulated conditions, if true, is indeed inexcusable. it's beyond incompetent, i put more care into updating my graphics card drivers!

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