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Home Space Space flight

Russians declare Phobos-Grunt probe failed

Mihai Andrei by Mihai Andrei
November 14, 2011
in Space flight
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The probe, which had the purpose of reaching one of the two Martian moons, was declared dead, and it will probably crash on Earth in January, without presenting any kind of risk to populated areas.

Phobos Grunt
An artist's depiction of the Phobos-Grunt probe on orbit

 

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The Phobos-Grunt probe was supposed to reach Mars, orbit it a few months, deploy a Chinese satellite, then land on Phobos, take samples of rocks and dust and then return to Earth – ambitious plans. But everything took a turn for the worse, when the computer onboard the craft failed to fire two engine burns to send it on its trajectory. Russian scientists and engineers had three days to fix this issue before the batteries wouldn’t have enough power to restart the engines.

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However, the task proved to be too big, and the probe was declared dead, in a major blow for the Russian space program morale. After the US has retired all its space orbiters, this is another major setback for space exploration worldwide; hopefully, the Russians will be able to cope with this problem and not give up on further such initiatives, but rather, focus and progress even more. The entire space program needs to stay focused, and it requires as much support as it can get.

Mihai Andrei

Mihai Andrei

Andrei's background is in geophysics, and he's been fascinated by it ever since he was a child. Feeling that there is a gap between scientists and the general audience, he started ZME Science -- and the results are what you see today.

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