{"id":7547,"date":"2012-01-09T10:23:26","date_gmt":"2012-01-09T16:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcitement.com\/?p=7547"},"modified":"2012-01-09T10:24:46","modified_gmt":"2012-01-09T16:24:46","slug":"russia-fails-to-get-it-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/culture\/russia-fails-to-get-it-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia Fails To Get It Up"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Russian Federal Space Agency, frequently referred to as Roscosmos, hasn\u2019t had much luck with interplanetary missions in the past 20 years.\u00a0 RFSA’s most recent space probe, Phobos-Grunt, has a saga that deviates little from the outcomes of predecessors such as Mars 98. Launched on November 9, 2011, Phobos-Grunt was meant to land on Mars\u2019s moon Phobos, collect soil and rock samples, and return to Earth around 2014. After reaching low-earth orbit, however, the rockets intended to launch the spacecraft towards Mars failed to fire, leaving Phobos-Grunt stranded. On November 24, the mission was pronounced a failure as pieces of the spacecraft began re-entering the Earth\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n Phobos-Grunt carried Yinghuo-1, the orbiter intended as the first Chinese spacecraft to explore Mars, which the China National Space Administration declared lost on November 17, 2011, as a result of Phobos-Grunt\u2019s inability to leave low-earth orbit. The Russian space probe also contained a small capsule of microorganisms from the Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment<\/a>, a mission developed by the government-independent Planetary Society to test the idea that life could survive travel through space if protected by rock blasted from one planet to another.<\/p>\n Just a few hours after its launch and entry into low-earth orbit, Phobos-Grunt\u2019s first set of rockets should have fired, sending the spacecraft into an elliptical orbit, and from there, a second set of rockets would have sent it on its journey towards Mars. The first rocket burn, however, never took place, and the probe became stuck in parking orbit around Earth. Twice, on November 22 and November 23, the European Space Agency\u2019s tracking station made contact with Phobos-Grunt, but the communication line was insufficient to command the probe\u2019s engines to fire to raise its orbit or to receive enough information to determine the cause of the malfunction.<\/p>\n The remaining pieces of Phobos-Grunt will re-enter Earth\u2019s atmosphere on January 15<\/a>, give or take a few days; predictions differ as to how much of the spacecraft will survive the trip through the Earth\u2019s atmosphere, by some accounts as many as 20 or 30 remnants totaling 440 pounds could reach the ground while other theories say the entire spacecraft will be destroyed. No serious injury or property damage from space debris has been confirmed, and the likelihood of debris from Phobos-Grunt posing a hazard to people is small, given the percentage of the Earth covered by water and the population distribution on land.<\/p>\n