Who knows good Russian here?



Source: http://phobos.cosmos.ru/index.php?id=388&a...p;thread_uid=21

Looks like Trans-Mars Injection was achieved.

I should hope not because it's too early for that.

That segment you quoted appears to be talking about vehicle state after initial parking orbit injection, as per a translation on NSF.com:


Which was preceded by :

Thanks ugordan, I did mess up the timeline there! But the lack of updates is a bit annoying. What does TMI stand for in this case, any clue? Telemetry?

Telemetry information, I guess. I was tempted to say Trans-Mars Injection, but it was spelled TMI in Russian as well so I guess not...

Did a little search and a Powerpoint presentation showed up, which also mentioned ESA involvement in the data communication. So telemetry seems to be right.

FSA Report.

(Slide 7)

Seesat-L report

Phobos-Grunt - serious problem reported
http://www.satobs.org/seesat/Nov-2011/0069.html



Edit: scooped.

Shades of Mars 96..

And no telemetry.

http://phobos.cosmos.ru/index.php?id=388&a...d=21&page=2

Tweet:

Damn.

:sad banana:

Pity. I imagine if there was one mission in the entire russian space program
that failure would not have been tolerated, it was this one.

T.

Via www.nasaspaceflight.com

Someone at the NASASpaceflight forum indicated that
"U.S. DSN's Goldstone Antenna Complex received one ping from Spacecraft. SC performed TM downlink via all available channels, this is indicating an anomaly detected by SC computer. Roscosmos inserted an SC slew commanding sequence in the flight program to point the SC's antennas toward the North (to be pointing at U.S., European, Russian ground stations) in the event of a problem before the burn(s) so that data can be more quickly obtained. This allows them to analyze the data and try again another day since MDU is completely powered by SC's solar panels. Goldstone DSN is indicating that SC is in a contingency safe mode. Contact was lost at planned LOS (with no first burn) and was not picked up by Europe's first tracking station. Sun pointing for solar panels may not have been established before battery charging was commenced by flight computer. "

So maybe Fobos-Grunt is alive, even if in a contingency mode.

Another day, another burn. Let's hope so!

Then it all depends on how flexible the mission profile is
(and assuming the upper stage is healthy)

When was the last reported contact?
With the Soyuz facility in South America surely they can monitor their spacecraft in real time in between passes over Russia?


Edit - Posts 464-467 arrived unnoticed. I'm relieved to see they are getting good cooperation from all available resources.

If it's still in contact... could be worse?

BTW, here's the forum.nasaspaceflight.com thread mentioned above, since it took me a little while to find it.

http://www.satobs.org/seesat/Nov-2011/0071.html

From the celestial mechanics point of view,
if the probe is in the correct Earth parking orbit,
there shouldn't be a reason why trans-mars injection
cannot be attempted later on, may be even several days later.

We shall see. It ain't over until the fat upper stage sings..twice.

Would the second object in the same orbit be the upper stage of the Zenit launcher?

The Deep Impact probe went into safe mode after spacecraft seperation. It seemed it had been lost for a while.

That's reported to be likely, but is unconfirmed.

Still some hope - but regardless of whether this ends up as a launch failure or a success following a difficult start this is a reminder that space exploration is not easy. It's hard - very hard. I just hope the Russians keep trying - if they do they'll eventually fly a spectacularly successful Mars mission. They have shown at Venus what they are capable of.

Are there any orbital experts here? What's the rate of decay/lifetime in this parking orbit, generally?

Actually, not really. It didn't seem 'lost' at all. If you were under the impression it was - then that's your typically over negative interpretation - and doesn't reflect the realty of the DIF spacecraft's post launch safing.

That was after it had left LEO and was on its way to Tempel 1. The s/c continued critical events, such as solar array deployment - and was talking to the ground.

It's the lack of data that makes this current predicament hard to diagnose and fix.

I'm not an orbital expert.
Some guy on NSF reckons "It's parking orbit will certainly keep it up there for a few more days, but not much more" (working not shown).
I wondered if there was any tool which one could plug Ted Molczan's elements into to get a very rough reentry prediction (I know precise prediction is Hard). The only online tool I found on a quick search was here, and it's asking for numbers I don't have (orbital height could be calculated from elements, although not by me; "drag (cd)" I have no idea about).

EDIT: sticking Ted's elements into this form indicates it's a 350x208km orbit, if that helps anyone gauge the orbit's longevity.

Here's a nice paper that includes a sample program to figure it out. (Starting with the results from that very cool web applications that JTN found!)

http://www.ips.gov.au/Category/Educational...alculations.pdf

Someone would need to convert it from QuickBasic though.

--Greg

As well as Emily's blog, another page summarising widely believed facts is on russianspaceweb (section "Crisis unfolds").
The information/rumours there right now look like the same ones we've already seen based on public posts on SeeSat-L and NSF; nothing new that I can see.

Agreed.

http://ria.ru/science/20111109/484401134.html

Looks like neither burn has ocurred, via the Russianspaceweb article. Looks like some good news.

Something official-looking (quoting Vladimir Popovkin, General Director of the Russian Federal Space Agency) from RIA Novosti (Google translation). (via NSF)

Translation of the direct quote, also from Svetoslav on NSF:



EDIT: (i) jinx; (ii) the RIA Novosti article is getting longer every time I look at it. Perhaps something else interesting in there?

The quick and dirty Google translation says no fuel was spent and no tanks were jettisoned. This safe mode was foreseen during development and it seems they will give more information during the day (Moscow time?).

Edit: And the likely cause may have been a sensor failure, and therefore spacecraft orientation.

I don't know if this has been posted yet here, nbut there it goes. Admins, feel free to delete if already posted


Baikonur Cosmodrome (Kazakhstan), November 9 - RIA Novosti. In deriving the Russian interplanetary station "Phobos-Grunt" on the flight path to Mars has developed emergency situations. Marching propulsion (MRL) has not worked, there was not one of the two inclusions, told reporters Wednesday at Baikonur Space Agency head Vladimir Popovkin.

The station "Phobos-Grunt" was launched on Wednesday at 0:16 GMT, from Baikonur. After separating the station from the launch vehicle "Zenit-2SB" should have happened two stations including MRLs, after which she was supposed to otletnuyu orbit to Mars.

"We've had a bad night, we could not detect long spacecraft, now found his position. It was found that the propulsion system failed. There was neither the first nor the second inclusion," - said Popovkin.According to him, it is possible that the spacecraft "could not shift from the Sun to the stars."

"The track complex, could it be that has not been given the command to activate the sensors, propulsion system," - said Popovkin.

He stressed that this is a freelance situation, but it's working, it was foreseen in the design of the project, and was envisaged course of action in this situation.

"We will surcharge program spacecraft. The orbit on which the unit - support, no tanks are not dumped, no fuel was spent," - said the head of the Russian Space Agency.

He added that the time to restart the program from the experts there for three days.

"During the day we will definitely inform all of the future situation," - said Popovkin.
MRLs are made on the basis of the upper stage "Fregat", but greatly upgraded.

This launch was Russia's first attempt in 15 years to carry out an interplanetary research mission. The station "Phobos-Grunt" to explore the satellite of Mars - Phobos - the first time in history to deliver soil samples to Earth from the satellite.

Previous attempts by Russian scientists to send an interplanetary probe was launched in November 1996, when he was running the machine, "Mars-96", for the exploration of Mars. In addition to studies of the planet from orbit, he had landed on the martian surface landers and probes Penetrators. Because of the failure booster station did not come to the right orbit and fell into the ocean. However, many design made for her, were used for European vehicles "Mars Express" and "Venus Express".

From Google auto-translation:

"Three days". Is that how long they have to figure it out and fix it?

Well, looks like we'll get a human translation soon; thanks in advance, "slugnads".

They have three days to upload new software before the batteries run out, which might confirm the sensor/orientation problem.

Ah yes. From Svetoslav again: "Russian specialists have only three days to upload the new software before the batteries run out of power..." (source: Interfax; Google)

What I like the most is this sentence:

Popovkin: I won't say that the launch was a failure. It was an abnormal situation - but it has already been worked out.

If I understand the situation correctly, he is not saying that they have solved the problem. What he's saying is that what has happened is one of the failure modes that they had developed contingency plans for. So presumably they are now working through their contingency plans.

How long is the actual window? I would hope that it's longer than three days, and also hope that this is not being used as an artificial deadline; no need to force a premature possible solution.

For getting to Mars I think its a month or so? MSL's launch period lasts till December 18th, so that's how long the planetary positions are aligned (take this with a grain of salt).

There maybe something unique that constrains the ejection burn from LEO to Mars once they're in LEO. Their window may have been a couple of weeks to launch, but once launched, the orbital parameters of that launch may constrain the ejection to a few days.

If true, the issue being discussed in various posts on the nasaspaceflight thread (see 421 and preceding) about shared control by a Roscosmos and a JPL computer is going to make it very difficult to fix any software problems quickly. If the machines are fully redundant, turning off one or the other might salvage almost a 50% chance of success, but if they are performing complementary tasks it's going to get really messy trying to meet that three-day battery discharge limitation.

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=15610.420

If the power problem can somehow be solved independently of whatever other problems exist, it would be very interesting to know how much time that would actually buy. Is orbital decay going to become a factor?

I would take anything being said - other than from an 'official source' - with a very big grain of salt right now.
There's a lot being claimed as fact by non-mission people on the internet that is simply not true.
I mean that as reference to stuff being said and re-reported on forums, twitter, blogs and even facebook.
Stick with credible reports on the mission coming from its space agency only and being reported by credible sources.

Take a deep breath everyone, we will have all the answers soon enough.

Words of wisdom, Astro0.

Re your comment, Doug: Yeah, could see that. What occurs to me is LEO inclination, and how the relationship between the desired insertion orbital inclination @ Mars may change as the planets move along their solar orbits over the span of a few days...certainly seems like it might be enough to make a significant difference.

But, whatever. We're all just spinning our wheels. To reiterate Astro0's excellent point, let's wait for the real experts, and not joggle their elbows as they try to deal with the situation.

EDIT: Reuters article indicates that the three-day deadline is imposed by battery limits. This implies that the spacecraft is not power-positive...which in turn also may confirm that it indeed did not separate from the Fregat.

Seems like the clock is indeed ticking. Best of luck, F-G team.

It was brought up that nodal regression of the parking orbit might be a big issue. The inclination of the orbit stays the same, but the plane in which it lies rotates around Earth's axis slowly due to Earth's oblateness. More propellant to waste correcting for this out-of-plane injection the bigger the delay is.

It's sad to see another mission to Phobos fail. I don't think it will be possible to get the spacecraft to Mars now.

from http://phobos.cosmos.ru/index.php?id=388&a...d=21&page=3

"Telemetry got through, orientation system works. At the moment the spacecraft is out of the visibility range. We are waiting for telemetry at 21:30 Moscow time so that we can find out what the problem is."