Phobos probe's fate shrouded in silence

MOSCOW?? Russian engineers continued their struggle to revive a stranded interplanetary spacecraft on Friday, but experts also began debating scenarios for the Phobos-Grunt probe's uncontrolled fall from Earth orbit.

So far, Russian controllers have failed to establish contact with the 13-ton spacecraft, leaving little hope of recovering the ambitious mission that was intended to reassert Russia's place at the front lines of space exploration.

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"They are trying everything, including visual methods to try to assess what is wrong with it, but of course the situation doesn't inspire much hope," the $163 million mission's lead scientist, Alexander Zakharov of Moscow's Space Research Institute, told Reuters.

Phobos-Grunt ("Phobos-Soil") was launched from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan early Wednesday, and was due to set out from Earth orbit hours later on a months-long odyssey to Phobos, one of Mars' two moons. But instead, controllers lost contact with the spacecraft, which appears to be inert in orbit.

Observers around the world, including NASA and the U.S. military, are trying to help the Russians get a fix on Phobos-Grunt's orbital position and re-establish communications. Russia's space agency, known as Roscosmos, initially said controllers would have only three days to contact the probe before its batteries ran out, but the latest word is that they have two weeks to upload the required commands to the spacecraft.

If Phobos-Grunt can't be revived, its orbit will steadily decay until it plunges back through the atmosphere and crashes. Some reports suggested that the re-entry could come as soon as Nov. 26 ? but Nicholas Johnson, the head of NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office, favored a later time frame.

"NASA predicts that under current conditions, the re-entry of Phobos-Grunt will likely not occur until next month," he told msnbc.com in an email. "This is dependent upon both the level of solar activity and the attitude/stability of Phobos-Grunt. As the re-entry date nears, the uncertainty will be reduced."

The 13-ton craft is carrying a full 10-ton payload of toxic hydrazine fuel and nitrogen tetroxide as well as a small cargo of radioactive cobalt-57. If the propellants are in liquid form, they would almost certainly explode during atmospheric re-entry. But if they are frozen, at least some of it could hit the surface. That has led some observers to classify Phobos-Grunt as one of the most toxic pieces of potential space junk in orbit.

What's the problem?
Experts speculated that Phobos-Grunt's problems may be linked to the craft's onboard flight computer, which failed to fire two engine burns to send it on its trajectory toward Phobos. There is a small chance the software could be reprogrammed, if controllers can link with the craft. But if the troubles are hardware-related, the mission is likely lost, Zakharov and other industry sources told Reuters.

Russia is relying on a single ground site to try to reach the craft once every few hours along its orbit. Some observers have suggested that Phobos-Grunt's communication antennas are being blocked by a fuel tank that was designed to drop away after the orbital engine burns that never took place.

Whatever the cause, the spacecraft's continued silence contributed to a grim mood in Moscow. "In my opinion, Phobos-Grunt is lost," Vladimir Uvarov, a former chief Russian military expert on space, told the state-run Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

China also could be disappointed after entrusting its first interplanetary Mars satellite, Yinghuo-1, to piggyback on the mission. Phobos-Grunt is also carrying bacteria, plant seeds and tiny animals known as water bears, part of a study organized by the nonprofit Planetary Society to see if the organisms could survive beyond Earth's protective magnetic field.

What's the plan?
The plan was for Phobos-Grunt to reach Martian orbit next year, touch down on the larger of its two tiny moons in 2013, collect a sample from the surface and fly back to Earth in 2014. Dust from Phobos, scientists say, would shed light on the genesis of the solar system and Mars' enduring mysteries.

If Phobos-Grunt is lost, it will join a long string of over a dozen Soviet and Russian missions to fail en route to Mars. When Russia's Mars-96 probe broke up over the Pacific in 1996, it was seen as a proof of the industry's deterioration after a generation of brain drain and crimped budgets. Phobos-Grunt's problems could lead to a new round of soul-searching.

"The entire national space program, which, in its current form, provokes isolated technical mishaps, is in for a major reorganization," said Konstantin Bogdanov, military commentator for the RIA Novosti news service.

NASA has had its own Mars mishaps, including the failure of a lander and an orbiter in 1998. But it has also notched its share of successes. The U.S. space agency currently has a rover and two orbiters in operation on Mars. Later this month, NASA is due to launch its $2.5 billion, car-sized Curiosity rover, which is designed to assess the Red Planet's suitability for life.

This report includes information from msnbc.com and Reuters.

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Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45263287/ns/technology_and_science-space/

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