Russian engineers are fighting to save the country's latest mission to Mars.
The Phobos-Grunt probe launched successfully but then failed to fire the engine to put it on the correct path to the Red Planet.
Russian space agency officials say the craft is currently stuck in an Earth orbit and that engineers have three days to correct the fault before the probe's batteries run out.
The project is Russia's most ambitious space venture in recent years.
It has been designed to collect rock and dust samples from Mars' moon Phobos and bring them back for study in Earth labs.
Continue reading the main story?Start Quote
End Quote Vladimir Popovkin Russian space agency headI would not say it's a failure, it's a non-standard situation, but it is a working situation.?
Scientists hope the dusty debris will provide fresh insights into the origin of the 27km-wide moon, which many scientists suspect may actually be a captured asteroid.
The venture is also significant because it is carrying China's first Mars satellite. Yinghuo-1 is riding piggyback on Phobos-Grunt.
The two craft lifted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on a Zenit rocket at 00:16 local time on Wednesday (20:16 GMT Tuesday) and were dropped off in an elliptical orbit around the Earth 11 minutes later.
Almost two and a half hours later, the huge cruise stage attached to Phobos-Grunt should then have made the first of two firings, to raise the orbit and to send the mission on to Mars. Russian officials say neither of those planned engine burns occurred.
"It looks like the engine system has not worked," Vladimir Popovkin, the head of the Russian space agency (Roscosmos), explained.
"It means that it did not determine orientation on the stars.
"I would not say it's a failure; it's a non-standard situation, but it is a working situation."
Torrid historyIf the problem is simply a software issue and engineers can upload new commands, they have a chance of rescuing the mission. If the fault lies in a hardware malfunction, Phobos-Grunt may well be doomed.
Onboard battery power provides a just short window in which to make any corrections.
Russia had been hoping that Phobos-Grunt would finally bury its Martian curse.
Moscow has despatched a total of 16 missions to the Red Planet since the 1960s. None has successfully completed its goals, with the most recent endeavour - the sophisticated Mars-96 spacecraft - being destroyed in a failed launch.
Phobos-Grunt is a hefty spacecraft, requiring several elements to complete the tasks of travelling out to Mars, landing on Phobos, picking up its samples and then despatching them home.
If you include the Phobos-Grunt cruise stage, all its fuel and Yinghuo-1, the total mass for the mission is more than 11 tonnes. That makes the venture the biggest Solar System expedition since the six-tonne Cassini-Huygens craft was launched to Saturn in 1997.
Provided engineers can correct the current problem, Phobos-Grunt should reach Mars next September.
After dumping the cruise stage and releasing Yinghuo-1, the main spacecraft would then manoeuvre itself into position to land on Phobos.
Shipped homeDetailed mapping of the moon has been conducted by the European Space Agency's Mars Express (MEx) satellite, and this information is being used to identify a suitable location to land in February 2013.
Once on the surface, a robotic arm will pick up samples of the regolith ("soil"). Some of this material will be analysed there and then, but a portion of it - about 200g - will be transferred to a canister for return to Earth.
This canister and its departure stage should be sent home within a few days of Phobos-Grunt's arrival on the moon. If all goes well, the canister should fall to Earth in the Kazakh desert in August 2014.
Potato-shaped Phobos is a fascinating target. Although it has been studied extensively by passing satellites, it still holds many secrets - not just about itself, but also the planet below.
It is one of two moons at Mars (the other being Deimos). It has an extremely low density, indicating it probably has many interior voids.
Some scientists think it may be a collection of rocky rubble that coalesced around the Red Planet soon after its formation. Another explanation is that it is an asteroid that came close to Mars and got caught in its gravity.
'Water bears'The French (Cnes) and German (DLR) space agencies have provided instrumentation for Phobos-Grunt. The European Space Agency, in addition to its survey information from MEx, will be providing ground support.
US participation comes in the form of the space advocacy group, The Planetary Society.
It is sending its Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE) on Phobos-Grunt.
This package of hardy micro-organisms will make the journeys out and back inside a separate compartment in the return capsule.
It will test theories on how living organisms could spread through the Solar System by simulating aspects of the long-duration voyage that microbes could make in a meteoroid that has been blasted off one planetary body and landed on another.
The microscopic participants in LIFE include the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans, known for its ability to withstand high doses of radiation, and the eight-legged tardigrade (or "water bear"), a microscopic invertebrate that has already demonstrated its ability to survive short exposure to the space environment.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/science-environment-15631472
dr murray trial herman cain take care drake cain accuser real housewives of atlanta nene leakes aesop rock
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.