Will Russia ever launch another Phobos Grunt mission?
Ever since the failure of the Phobos-Grunt space mission, Russian scientists at IKI have been talking about the proposal for a repeat mission, whose
outcome depends on Russia's participation in the European ExoMars mission. It came to pass, and Roscosmos isn't going to repeat Phobos-Grunt, at least
for the time being, or at all.
Roskosmos groups can face financial liability for failures. There are worst to come. The chief designer for Glosnass has been fired a month ago, and
criminal cases and possible indictments are pending against others, particularly the scientists and engineers that formed the team behind the
Phobos-Grunt mission (which I think it has already been disbanded), at both IKI and Lavochkin.
edit on 10-12-2012 by bryansee because: Adding
roughly time order signal, and some changes
On an ending note, the project website
phobos.cosmos.ru... is still online at the time of this writing, I
strongly fear that this could be used as an official site for the Russian participation in ExoMars, I think. U.S. space law lawyer Michael Listner
said that Phobos-Grunt is "way too ambitious and way too underfunded to reach its goal", possibly condemning it. I guess that this is the law that
Russian organizations has violated - and they have to put on trial by the Russian court and its jury if indicted.
By the way, activist group Anonymous and its sub-group #AntiSec may be planning to take on Russian organizations linked with the failed Phobos-Grunt
mission through the
Operation Russia flag, either through protests and other public actions, or any legal
online action. Anyway, I don't think it may happen anytime soon.
edit on 10-12-2012 by bryansee because: Addition of ending notes
