Well, since it's been quite some time since the Russians have had a successful interplanetary mission, we'll see if they can simply pick up where they left off, with a Phobos sample return no less.

Craig Covault has an interesting piece in this week's issue of AW&ST ("Russians Criticize U.S. on Lunar and Planetary Cooperation") where he states:

"Russia is reenergizing its lunar and planetary program with the planned launch of a sample return mission to the Martian moon Phobos and the launch of an ambitious lunar penetrator mission, the first Russian mission to the Moon in 30 years (AW&ST June 5, p. 20). But Russian managers here said the U.S. has shown little or no interest in Russian overtures for collaboration on these flights."

Translation: The Russians are under no illusions that they don't need partners to make these missions work, which is why, in the absence of any firm collaboration agreements, I remain skeptical that, for example, Phobos-Grunt will ever happen, nice graphics and lofty rhetoric notwithstanding.

Why aren't the Americans much interested to work with Russian's overtures? Let suppose that this cooperation will have many advantages for them and also to our mankind:

1. Saves money.
2. Interchange of knowledge, technology and experience..
3. Shorten the development and launch cycle time.

I must admit that the above reason is just an ideal world. At this time and many centuries, we are still going to live with a country's domain barrier in our minds.

Watch it out that Russian will probably join with others countries willing to work with him. Are ESA interested to work with Russian in returning its project of Phobos-Grunt?
I have the impression that ESA is at the present time not much interested to join with Russians to work on that project unless ESA is more interested on explorating on any Gallilean Moon: Europa.

Rodolfo

But unfortunately, I don't think any of these benefits would be seen. Russia would not supply a lot of money, they have almost no technology that NASA needs, and international planning could actually complicate development. ESA has needed Russia (or America) to perform interplanetary launches, but I think they also prefer to do things themselves if they can.

The fact that Russia launched Mars Express and Venus Express does indicate they can perform sophisticated tasks. And their Earth-resource and military satellites perform many of the same kinds of manuevers and sensor readings of a planetary probe.

I wish them luck. To be honest, I think international competition is a good thing, it will excite passion and public support for space exploration.

Unlike the case with interplanetary missions, Russia hasn't experienced a 20-year gap in launches, and no one really questions their launch capability. And I'm not sure that operating civilian earth-monitoring or military satellites is really that great an indicator as to whether they can pull off a Phobos sample return.

The Russian design bureau's have habit of proposing missions and giving summaries to the media, when the RSA doesn't have the money to do anything. The Kliper is another example.

I'm sure NASA could do it. I'd give Russia or ESA about equal likelihood of being able to pull it off. Military and Earth-resource satellites require technology for precise attitude control and orbital maneuvering, which I think would be relevant to a mission like this.

I'm sure it would be relevant, if not critical. I guess I'm looking at Phobos-Grunt in totality, not each individual component, which the Russians may or may not have sucessfully demonstrated in analogous situations. In the early stages, there were many who thought Mars Observer was simply going to be a matter of flying a terrestrial weather satellite to Mars. Or that MPL wasn't really that hard because we had already soft-landed on Mars twenty years before.

I think there is another thing to look at, in terms of ability to pull this mission off. Alex and Don have made posts concerning the technical aspects. But I think a lot of the debate is whether or not, come 2009, there will actually be a launch, or whether the mission dies on paper. I think there is a reasonable chance of this mission actually launching.

I'm not stating absolutely that this mission will never fly. I hope it does. And anything (e.g., the Russians putting together Phobos-Grunt in 36 months) is possible, I guess. However, I need to see a lot more than what has been shown so far before I become a believer. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I've seen the Russians basically chumming the waters for partners with mission concepts and no one has bitten. I don't even think the Russians believe they can pull off the mission alone. If they did, why would they be concerned that, as Covault reports, the U.S. isn't showing enough interest? My fear is that U.S. dollars will be tied up in this effort. I say let the Russians first show they can do it, and if they're successful, then I have no doubt that potential partners will be lining up.

It's certainly something they've wanted to do for a long time.

Click to view attachment

Here is a mystery photo for you all. There is something very interesting in this picture. Do you see it?

What, the Lavochkin and/or Babakin version of a "clean room"?

Don:

Er...

Bob Shaw

Don't see a picture...

Yeah, it's gone. Strange. I saw it earlier when I replied to the post.

It is very well known of Russian's past missions to Mars which ended with 100% of failures for landers and some success for orbiters. It is of the year 80's, more than 25 years ago, at that time, there were NO cooperation between RSA and NASA (none ephemerals data) and the technology were very much backward.

Then now, these days, there is cooperation between them about the ephemerals data? The space technology of RSA is not so much backward as before. In spite of the fact of changing time, I think that the RSA mission to Phobos-Grunt is still of moderate risk since RSA has never tried a similar mission. I won't compare it as Earth - Moon versus Earth- Mars - Phobos which is somewhat more complicated since that mission there is one hoop additional (inter-planetary). That is the first kind of mission, return from another planet! that would be a deed that Russian likes according to long space history!

Rodolfo

All of Don Mitchell's images in the Spacecraft Images thread are gone as well.

What happened?

Not sure what's going on. The images all remain safe within the uploads folder, so they are certainly not 'gone'.

I'm going to check up with variaous support forums etc, see if anyone knows of a symptom like this. Very strange indeed.

Doug

Actually, I believe their was cooperation on Phobos-2. In fact, Americans were involved in tracking the spacecraft to determine the decay rate of the orbit of Phobos (the moon, not Phobos-2). There was also limited exchange of data on the earlier missions.

Is the 1 MB limit for attachments causing this? I was wondering how Don
could post so many images - not that I'm complaining, mind you.

Doug:

Maybe you can raise the limits re size/quantity of posts for A Selected Few? Don's posts would qualify for special treatment by any criteria, IMHO.

Darn. Just got my post allocation chopped to 10k, have I?

Bob Shaw

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=2878

(totally unrealted to attachment limits - and indeed, Don is the sort of guy whereby if he reached the limit - I'd increase it )

Doug

Craig Covault, reporting from the Farnborough 2006 Air Show, has an interesting article ("Mars Phobos Mission Readied As Russia Weighs Goals") in the July 17, 2006, issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology. Rather than quoting excerpts, which is tough to do while maintaining context, and which also misses some of the Lavochkin artwork, I'll go ahead and attach the article in this message.

...ambitious, hope that it flies!!!

I wonder how long the surface sample acquisition & return launch process is anticipated to last. The three-year timeframe sure reminds me of the manned Mars landing proposals that only permitted a ten-day surface stay...not a lot of schedule slack there, especially if there are problems...

EDIT: Whoops...I may have confused that (presumably Hohmann) trajectory stay time with that of a much faster nuclear-powered trip that featured something like a six-month dash each way. Can someone please clarify?

It says 11 months transit each way.

It also says the lander is designed to last a year on the surface.

Note that Zakharov et al. have a related abstract for the upcoming European Planetary Science Conference 2006.

Russia, China could sign Moon exploration pact in 2006

In fact after global redesigning in 2003 some of Fobos-Grunt payload (50-100 kg) had been allocated for additional scientific instruments, presumably of foreign origin (european first of all). That’s the opportunity we offer to Chinese and some agreement had been finally reached. The kind of payload is still to be determined. It can be some instrument or even small exploration probe like japanese “Minerva”, which failed to land on Itokawa. The main question is whether Chinese manage to meet deadline of 2009 year launch.

By now launch date remains steady and funding increases progressively every year. First technological model of spacecraft was manufactured this summer and already shipped to vibrotesting. So we have all chances to make Fobos-Grunt a reality.

Of course this is a very ambitious mission, even more complex and difficult than Hayabusa. Fobos-Grunt will perform actual landing, not hovering in Haybusa’s style, that’s much more risky and greatly depend on too many circumstances which are still unknown. For example there is still exist no accurate map of Phobos. We need map with resolution of 30 cm to detect all potentially hazardous rubbles and slopes, but currently only 3-5 m resolution available. Nonetheless after preliminary investigations several landing sites were chosen. Primary site is located near 20 S, 315 W. This is equatorial region on Mars-facing side of Phobos , in its trailing hemisphere. See picture , I tried to attach. Smooth terrain without significant rubbles or grooves spans 310-360 W longitude and 40 S – 10 N latitude. Suitable place for landing and for observation - almost all the sky will be filled with Mars. After deorbit from near-Phobos trajectory landing ellipse has sizes of approximately 800x400 meters, but actually spacecraft can be autonomously guided to the chosen site within accuracy of ~10 m. Rather tricky, but paraphrasing famous sentence : “We choose to go to the Phobos till the end of decade, not ‘cause it easy, but ‘cause it hard.”

Thank you for this interesting contribution.

Can you say if a scientific paper will be published or a conference presentation will be made concerning the site selection process?

I remember discussing this with some people from GEOKHI several years ago. At that time a site on the northeast rim of Stickney was thought to be a possible site.

Phil Stooke

Welcome IM4. Your report was very interesting. Shall you let us know where do you get the above information? Is there a Phobos-Grunt project WEB portal?

Rodolfo

That would make for some great panoramas from the ground, I imagine...

There are several possible sites, i suppose. Ultimate decision will be made only after detailed imaging. You are right about Stickney rim, such a place was also under consideration, for example see this abstract from LPSC-2000 by Kuzmin, Shingareva. However their later papers in the "Astronomicheskiy vestnik" ("Astronomical bulletin") were referred to another places. As far as I know Springer is currently republishing "Astronomicheskiy vestnik", but I don’t know exact English title for this journal.


I doubt if such portal really exists. Information about Fobos-Grunt is dispersed among numerous articles, interviews and press-releases. I’ve just summarized some materials into single message.

A new update.

Russia Hopes To Launch Craft To Mission Mars Moon Phobos In 2009

The interesting points are:

1) He said there will be no need to use heavy carrier rockets, which make such launches very expensive.

2) The launch window for the voyage to Phobos is October 2009, and the journey will take 10-11 months. The spacecraft will begin its return journey to earth in 2011, which will take another 10-11 months.

Rodolfo

There is this Phobos website:

http://www.kiam1.rssi.ru/PHOBOS/

(in russian...) - at the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics. Some links lead to English text.

Phil

Phi, Many thanks for posting the URL.

Rodolfo

Russia, China Plan Joint Space projects

Perhaps HIRISE could assist with site selection?

I doubt it, I would guess that HiRISE won't get that great of resolution of Phobos, but I'm too lazy to do the math myself... Just would like to know what the Russian's fascination with Phobos is...

Hmmmm. Well, its often been compared in shape to "a big, blackened potato", and potatoes are a staple part of the Russian diet. Maybe a Russian Hoagland has convinced the powers that be over there that it could be brought back to Earth and used to feed everyone...

Well - roughly speaking, am I right in thinking that if you take the range in km, take a zero off, you can call it about that many cm/pixel ( i.e. 250-300k orbit = 25-20cm/pixel )

So - a good Phobos targetting opportunity would be about 10m/pixel, and Deimos about 25m/pixel

Doug

tuvas: "Just would like to know what the Russian's fascination with Phobos is..."

It's a niche not yet exploited by others, and a valuable science target in its own right. First landing, first samples, chance of Mars material among the samples, solve controversy over its origin - lots of good reasons to go there.

Phil

That link doesn't work for me any more. In case anyone else was still looking for that video, it's ended up on YouTube. (There was also a copy of the WMV here a few weeks ago, although I can't access it today.)


(Since no-one else has mentioned this yet:)
There have been some more news reports about this in the last few days. RIA Novosti suggests a "micro-satellite" from China will be dropped into Mars orbit (as has already been noted in this thread). Additionally, the IHT seems to think that China would "supply a device that would collect the soil samples" (seems rather late in the day to be deciding that?).

Dio's comments in another thread may also be of interest.

HERE you can see large photo of the full-sized Phobos-Grunt mockup. Real spacecraft production starts this year, possibly in the nearest time. It won't be flight exemplar, but several identical spacecrafts for vibro-, thermo- and so on testing.

Some more details have been announced for the Chinese contribution named "Yinghuo-1":



Xinhua

Thanks for the update, konangrit. Phobos and Deimos have always fascinated me, so I sincerely hope this mission comes off.

However, as my comments throughout this thread indicate, I remain "cautiously skeptical."

That's small for an interplanetary spacecraft. The description sounds like the Phobos-Grunt carrier can drop off the Chinese probe after the carrier achieves Mars orbit, so the China probe does not require an orbit insertion propulsion system which would save a lot of mass. It would be an impressive feat if it carries a good science payload and the power / comm to send data back.

That IS tiny...makes me wonder if they intend to equip it only with a UHF omni antenna/transceiver & use Phobos-Grunt as a relay to/from Earth. If so, what a role-reversal...

I found a lot of information on this in a presentation by Swedish scientist Stas Barabash. Yinghuo-1 will separate from Phobos-Grunt after MOI. It has no orbit transfer capabilities of its own, so will remain in a 800-by-80,000-kilometer equatorial orbit. It will have a 0.9- to 1.0-meter S-band HGA.

--Emily

If I remember correctly there were plans for a swedish probe in the Phobos-grunt mission, just like the chinese one a few years ago. Seems like China was more interested.

Thanks, Emily; terrific as usual (gee, you must be a journalist or something!) A damn good one, I might add.

Very ambitious yet compact; seems to reflect China's aggressive design philosophy to date (re the differences between Shenzhou V & VI); lots of confidence here. At this rate, they'll fly a Flagship-class mission independently by 2015!

If all that it takes to be a journalist is to know my way to google.com, then I'm a journalist.

--Emily