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In total, all of the previous 16 Russian missions to the Red Planet since the 1960s have failed \u2013 the latter of which was the Mars-96 spacecraft, which saw its mission ended prematurely in a launch failure.<\/p>\n
With a mass of 13,500 kilograms, Fobos-Grunt is the largest planetary spacecraft ever built in the former Soviet Union and was to be the first sample return mission to the natural satellite of another planet, and the first such mission to be conducted by Russia.<\/p>\n
The two-stage Zenit lofted Fobos-Grunt into orbit via the first stage\u2019s single RD-171M engine and second stage\u2019s RD-8 vernier engine and RD-120 main engine \u2013 both of which performed nominally. Following shutdown of the second stage main engine, Fobos-Grunt separated, and solid rocket motors on the second stage fired to increase the separation distance between the spent stage and the payload.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/B311.jpg\" "\\"B31\\"")
Fobos-Grunt was set to perform an orbit-raising manoeuvre two and a half hours after launch, prior to a second burn 126 minutes later, which would have taken it into heliocentric orbit to begin its journey to Mars. Both burns failed to materialize.<\/p>\nThe reason for the lack of a burn from the cruise stage \u2013 derived from the Fregat stage, powered by an S5.98M engine using unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine as propellant and nitrogen tetroxide as an oxidiser \u2013 is still not fully understood.<\/p>\n
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The lack of fault information is mainly due to the failed efforts by Russian controllers to re-establish a link with the spacecraft, in order to receive vital telemetry, or indeed send commands to aid such a process.<\/p>\n
Among the challenges associated with communicating with Fobos-Grunt during passes over ground stations was believed to be a potential blockage by the yet-to-be-used fuel tank of the low gain antennas. This tank \u2013 located on the aft of the cruise stage \u2013 would be expended and released in the event of both burns being completed. It is understood the spacecraft was never designed to be commanded prior to these two burns.<\/p>\n
Fobos-Grunt \u2013 The Breakthrough:<\/p>\n
However, on Tuesday evening, a breakthrough was achieved with the help of European Space Agency (ESA) assets.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/W2.jpg\" "\\"W2\\"")
Reported by the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany early on Wednesday, contact \u2013 the first observed since Fobos-Grunt\u2019s launch \u2013 was received by ESA\u2019s tracking station at Perth, Australia at 2025 GMT on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\u201cUpon request from NPO Lavochkin, operator of the mission on behalf of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, ESA agreed to do its utmost to attempt contact using the Agency\u2019s ground station network,\u201d noted an ESA statement on the breakthrough, with the attempts including modifications to the 15m dish.<\/p>\n
It was the modification to the dish, a last gasp effort to establish a link with Fobos-Grunt, which broke the silence, after previous attempts \u2013 including those of ESA \u2013 to communicate with the spacecraft. However, this initial success did not include the downlink of telemetry.<\/p>\n
\u201cStarting on November 9, and in close coordination with Russian engineers, ESA made almost daily attempts to contact Phobos-Grunt using numerous configurations and radio link modes, but to no avail. A major problem was that the spacecraft\u2019s orbit was not accurately known, whereas ground stations normally require very accurate position information for pointing due to the antenna size,\u201d added ESA.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/W3.jpg\" "\\"W3\\"")
\u201cIn the past few days, ESA\u2019s 15 m-diameter Perth dish was modified by the addition of a \u2018feedhorn\u2019 antenna at the side of the main dish so as to transmit very low-power signals over a wide angle in the hopes of triggering a response from the satellite.<\/p>\n\u201cThe transmit power was reduced in part because the receiver on Phobos-Grunt is optimised to receive only very weak signals when deep in space. Perth is ideally located because the satellite\u2019s solar panels were illuminated by sunlight when overhead, giving a power boost to its systems.<\/p>\n
With very short windows of opportunity to send communications to Fobos-Grunt as it raced overhead in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), controllers only had a matter of minutes to send commands, which related to switching on the the spacecraft\u2019s transmitter and send a confirmation signal back..<\/p>\n
\u201cOwing to its very low altitude, it was expected that our station would only have Phobos-Grunt in view for six to ten minutes during each orbit, and the fast overhead pass introduced large variations in the signal frequency,\u201d said Wolfgang Hell, the Phobos-Grunt Service Manager at ESOC.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/W4.jpg\" "\\"W4\\"")
During the Tuesday evening attempt, this was seen to be a success \u2013 leading to the received data being transmitted from Perth to Russian mission controllers, via ESOC for analysis.<\/p>\nVitally, this successful process raised hopes of being able to replicate the link, which also proved to be successful on a later pass, as confirmation of a successful downlink of abbreviated telemetry was noted.<\/p>\n
With numerous passes, opportunities to learn more about the spacecraft\u2019s health have since increased, such as reports the flight computer may be switching in and out of safe mode, when out of the line of sight with the sun.<\/p>\n
Following the Perth dish\u2019s success, it may also be possible to replicate the method employed at another ground station \u2013 potentially at ESA\u2019s Maspalomas Station, located at the Canary Islands, which hosts a 15-metre antenna with reception in S- and X-Band and transmission in S-band.<\/p>\n
As far as the potential recovery efforts, it is unlikely the spacecraft can be sent on its primary mission to Phobos, given its window of opportunity has now elapsed \u2013 at least from a complete mission standpoint. It may be possible to carry out an alternative mission profile, but no official notes of such evaluations have been released.<\/p>\n
Continued commanding link successes would also likely lead to a level of control for any extended stay in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), or for a controlled re-entry.<\/p>\n
UPDATE: Further communications were made between Wednesday and Thursday, although the telemetry is understood to be incomplete and \u201cgarbled\u201d \u2013 requiring a large amount of work to gain data from.<\/p>\n
There are many conflicting reports, mainly based around the quality of the telemtry and how much data has been gathered. Russian media have reported that a second dish \u2013 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome \u2013 has been in contact with the spacecraft on Thursday.<\/p>\n
With several passes per day, this is a developing story. Refer to the live update pages. Additional notes of interest will be added to this article.<\/p>\n
(Images: Via Roscosmos and ESA)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After nearly all hope was lost, the silence of the Fobos-Grunt spacecraft has been broken, following a major breakthrough via a European Space Agency (ESA) tracking station in Perth, Australia. With the earlier confirmation a carrier signal having been established during one pass, the pace of progress is picking up, with news that received telemetry data […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9152,2317,7900],"class_list":["post-40272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-fobos-grunt","tag-phobos","tag-russian"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40272"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}