Russian Mars mission launches after multi-year delays
After years of delay, Russia has successfully launched its first planetary probe since the Mars 96 failure at the end of the last millenium. The craft – Фобос-Грунт, or Phobos-Grunt ("grunt" means "soil" in Russian) – lifted off right on schedule at 2:16am local time (20:16 UT) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, aboard …
This topic is closed for new posts.
Have they included...
...the obligatory Zork-o-meter Leather Goddess detector?
Mine's the one with the cheese sandwich in the pocket...
Looks familiar...
Kinda looks like the old Venus probes the Ruskies landed back in the 60's. Heck for that price it might very well be a leftover from that age.
In any event, I wish them luck. Any human exploration is good exploration.
Love the Soviet design!
You have to hand it to the Russians - they know how to design spacecraft that LOOK like spacecraft!
I always get the feeling that US spacecraft (Orion, stop sniggering up the back!) are designed with marketing brochures in mind, whereas Russian spacecraft look like they are designed to DO STUFF.
Excellent
Hope it goes well. Mars has been a hard target historically.
Actually Mars is an easy target. It's *not* hitting it at full pelt that's the tricky bit.......
Phobos-Grunt ?
Are you sure that the name doesn't refer to the space marine in DOOM?
Yes
That's how it all started - on Phobos and with grunts...
Hope it goes well
The Chinese involvement is a good thing - maybe together they can push things along a bit in future. Nothing like a good space race to get things moving.
Well, at least we can be fairly certain
that whatever else fails, there won't be any embarrassing imperial/metric conversion issues with this one...
Unless they decide to range in versta.
No, that will happen with LOHAN
The problems will come with the LOHAN project, converting from olympic bathtubs and metric whales and elephants per square foot.
Go Russia!
(No real content to this comment, really, just my Slavic blood acting up.)
"If all goes well, Phobos-Grunt will arrive at Mars in October of next year, circle the planet for a few months, then land on the Martian moon Phobos, where it will pick up a few hundred precious grams of pebbles and dust. A return vehicle will then lift off from that moon and arrive back on Earth in 2014."
Just wow. Good luck guys!
Lanches and fails.
There is a surprise for a Russian Mars mission
Upper stage failure
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15631472
A Russian space probe sent to collect rock and dust from a Martian moon has veered off course within minutes of starting its 33 month mission.
The Russian space agency said an engine designed to keep the probe on track failed to start.
It says the craft is currently stuck in an Earth orbit and engineers have three days to correct the fault before its batteries run out.
"I would not say it's a failure, it's a non-standard situation, but it is a working situation." - Vladimir Popovkin, the head of the Russian Space Agency.
And it's already starting to fail.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15631472
The curse of Mars strikes again
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/09/russian-mars-probe-engines-fail
Oops
Looks like this was posted an hour or two too soon. Shame. I really don't care who is carrying out Interplanetary missions as long as someone is. Kudos to the Russians for keeping trying and lets hope they can salvage something out of (what looks like) a complete nightmare at the moment.
Damn
Left my double green ringed torch in its boot :(
I'll have to send Capt Black to retrieve it.
Da da dum...
... Da da dah dum!
(I actually had the Captain Scarlet uniform when I was *very* young!)
Oh, crap
That's why you have to have humuns on board on such missions. Just switch to manual and press a button is all it needs... Or, in the worst case, climb out and give it a kick...
This topic is closed for new posts.
