Russia's failed Phobos-Grunt space probe heads to Earth Sunday!

Russia's failed Mars probe, Phobos-Grunt, is about to fall back to Earth - quite probably on Sunday.

Mmmmmm? Fireworks!!

www.bbc.co.uk...

"It can very quickly tumble and if pieces break off - that all changes the trajectory and where debris might impact." explained Prof Richard Crowther, the UK Space Agency's chief engineer.

reply to post by CaptainBeno


I heard it was tumbling towards the Indian ocean this wknd....Would be a sight to see.I could just imagine a false flag event.

Yeah I live in Western Australia.......so I'm keeping fingers crossed.

A: It does not come down on my house

B: I get to see it.......safely

Either way.....it's gonna be a sight I hope?

reply to post by CaptainBeno


YAY!
Doom just for me!
After all Sunday is my Birthday

reply to post by EvolEric


Sweet! Fireworks for your birthday! Happy birthday!

reply to post by CaptainBeno

Ok if this is the Phobos reentry thread, then I got some conpiracy for everyone.

www.russianspaceweb.com...

Yet, Popovkin went even further and repeated a really bizarre accusation which had been previously made by at least one high-ranking Russian military officer about the possible sabotage of the Phobos-Grunt mission by foreign powers, hence by the United States. "Today there is no clarity, why the propulsion unit onboard Phobos-Grunt failed to start, Popovkin told Izvestiya, "It is also unclear, why our satellites often have failures at the time when they fly out of range (of Russian ground control) where we don't see the vehicle and do not receive telemetry from it. There is no wish to accuse anybody, but today there are very powerful means of influence on spacecraft and the possibility of their use can not be excluded."

Imagine them making such an accusation. It is what we would expect from the former Soviet Union, but not today's Russian space program. I half dismissed blaming America until I read the part about the failures occurring outside their range of telemetry.

There is a Chinese orbiter on board and maybe a "RTG" (Nuclear Battery), see the links below. One aspect of the Phobos mission was a sample return to earth of the Martian moon's "soil". Best current guess impact site is off the coast of South America?

Nuclear Batteries

I’ve suspected, but been unable to confirm, that there is some variant of an RTG on board Phobos-Grunt. I was able to find a source saying that the spacecraft has a thermal generator on board, but that’s all I know. I don’t speak Russian, but Phobos-Grunt contains an SOTR, which is short for Sistema Obespecheniya Teplovogo Rezhima. (By the way, I am told that grunt means soil in Russian. Phobos-Grunt was designed to travel to Phobos, scoop up soil and return it to Earth.)

Here’s the WNN link: www.world-nuclear-news.org...

And here’s a link for a website saying that there is a thermal generator on Phobos-Grunt: www.russianspaceweb.com...

I'm not sure how accurate this site is, but why wouldn't it be, Phobos-Grunt live tracker.

If it falls on Iran or Syria-- just imagine the ensuing threads which will appear on ATS!

Originally posted by Illustronic
I'm not sure how accurate this site is, but why wouldn't it be, Phobos-Grunt live tracker.

edit on 14-1-2012 by Illustronic because: (no reason given)

That site's servers cannot handle the load when a satellite is on its way down. It is working now-- but getting to it tomorrow will be difficult unless they have upgraded their hardware.

Also, I imagine that they use a simply calculation of its orbit rather than any tracking means and so not taking into account increased drag-- because they simply cannot know how much of the atmosphere it is encountering at any given time.

In the past, the NASA site had provided reasonably current tracking reports on uncontrolled re-entries-- but at some point tracking cannot find it, everyone shrugs and someone finally says, "It must be down... somewhere."

Still, I'll be outside looking up if is supposed to be in my own sky-- it may be a little late in appearing as it slows, but the angle over head should not vary.

EDIT: Wow and neat! The 5 day prediction link from your link says P-G is expected to pass northwest of my location, at 54 degrees above the horizon at 18:05 on Sunday. I might get lucky!

Originally posted by Illustronic
I'm not sure how accurate this site is, but why wouldn't it be, Phobos-Grunt live tracker.

Illustronic you the man... Excellent link to track PHOBOS GRUNT. Its flying over Kazahkstan right now.

Long time no chat. What is the word on whether there is a "Nuclear Battery" on board Grunt or the Chinese orbiter?

reply to post by intrptr


No nucs on Phobos-Grunt. There is however a relatively small amount of Colbalt in the battery system. Expected to incinerate in the atmosphere. Fuel tanks are also not of Titanium, should be a nice atmospheric burn. To Mars solar panels are very well suficcient for both the Russian and Chinese plans, which were short missions to begin with. JUNO is using very large solar panels for it's trip to Jupiter, not because we didn't want to purchase more Plutonium-238 from Russia, but because 10 years ago they thought it would be a better and more stable plan.

Like I said before, the largest surviving piece of Phobos-Grunt would be what was designed for reentry, The sample return capsule.

A similar test reentry capsule.


(Incidentally Curiosity is powered by Plutonium-238 so it can run continuously at night, and in the deep impact crater on Mars, and for little interruption of data transmission back to earth).

reply to post by Frira


I understand the points you make. I'm sure adjustments are made but to watch a reentry on that site, I'd have to say no chance, as you explain. But does give us some clues.

reply to post by Illustronic

the largest surviving piece of Phobos-Grunt would be what was designed for reentry, The sample return capsule.

Too bad it will be empty.

Interesting?

I also came across this.....

www.newscientist.com...

Phobos Grunt wasn't sabotaged by the US...................Honest! Gets the cells working a little harder!

Originally posted by Illustronic
reply to post by Frira

 

I understand the points you make. I'm sure adjustments are made but to watch a reentry on that site, I'd have to say no chance, as you explain. But does give us some clues.

Well.. I stand corrected.

They are making adjustments.

The predicted pass near me is a little earlier and a little east of the previous estimate, so they are correcting for the lower orbit.

Lower equals faster, faster means sooner, and sooner means more eastward.

Originally posted by Illustronic
I'm not sure how accurate this site is, but why wouldn't it be, Phobos-Grunt live tracker.

edit on 14-1-2012 by Illustronic because: (no reason given)

Thanks Illustronic,
That's a cool link...but.... am I reading it incorrectly?

It looks like the satellite is rising??

At 08:06 altitude is shown as 90.02 miles and at 08:08 it's 91.14??

Originally posted by Gordi The Drummer
That's a cool link...but.... am I reading it incorrectly?
It looks like the satellite is rising??

The website you're looking at does NOT track the satellite, nor any other satellite.
What it does in fact is to use a set of numbers that describe the satellute's orbit, and run mathematical calculations to predict mathematically where it should be at any given time. If/when the satellite reenters, that tracking website will not "know" about it.
This is the same for all satellite tracking websites.

The numbers used for the satellite orbit are known as TLE's (Two Line Elements)...
1 37872U 11065A 12014.96566869 .03262760 12629-4 49877-4 0 3097
2 37872 051.4135 354.3119 0016257 309.4622 051.2004 16.47077070 10845

What you're seeing is that the orbit isnt perfectly round, (with eccentricity of 0.0016257) and so as it orbits it is slightly higher at one point, and slightly lower at another.

A few links, so we can follow its fiery death plunge.

A "tracking" website, n2yo
A "tracking" website, heavens-above

Reentry predictions from aero.org
Twitter updates from PhG_Reentry

reply to post by alfa1


Brilliant! Thanks Alfa, that makes perfect sense now.
Are we any closer to finding out the likely impact point?

GTD

Originally posted by Gordi The Drummer
Are we any closer to finding out the likely impact point?

Of course as time goes by they (many people have a guess at "when") have a better idea of the exact reentry time, but it is complicated by the fact that satellites travel at something like 17 THOUSAND miles an hour.
So an error in the estimate of a few minutes will mean a completely different country or continent.

On the other hand, satellites do travel in a clearly defined orbital path, so the LINE at which it travels wont be uncertain by much at all.
Take a look at the image on the celestrak site...



It shows where the satellite will be at the exact predicted moment. It is travelling to the top right, so at a time a few minutes before this moment it will be off the coast of South America, and at the time a few minutes after, it will be passing over northwest Africa.

So although the moment is unknown, the path is certainly known.

Edit - Celestrak think it will reenter 4 hours from now, PhG_Reentry think it will be 5 hours from now.