Russia’s Phobos-Grunt mission to Mars has run into trouble after launch: It seems like the Russians just have incredibly bad luck when it comes to getting to Mars these days. After a successful launch yesterday (more background in a earlier post here), the Mars probe mission disappeared from contact for a short while. Amateur astronomers in South America were able to assist in locating the spacecraft, which appears to be stuck in an intermediate orbit around Earth. When a spacecraft needs to leave the pull of the Earth, they do a series of “burns” to get to a higher orbit. Eventually, the thrust of the burn slingshots the craft out of Earth’s orbit and toward the final destination. As noted in the picture above, the craft needed two burns to leave our orbit, and both of those have apparently malfunctioned. It has been paused in a “safe” mode for the time being so that the Russians can check if it’s a software problem (fixable) or a hardware problem (not fixable). (via The Planetary Society)
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Russia’s Phobos-Grunt mission to Mars has run into trouble after launch:

It seems like the Russians just have incredibly bad luck when it comes to getting to Mars these days. After a successful launch yesterday (more background in a earlier post here), the Mars probe mission disappeared from contact for a short while.

Amateur astronomers in South America were able to assist in locating the spacecraft, which appears to be stuck in an intermediate orbit around Earth.

When a spacecraft needs to leave the pull of the Earth, they do a series of “burns” to get to a higher orbit. Eventually, the thrust of the burn slingshots the craft out of Earth’s orbit and toward the final destination.

As noted in the picture above, the craft needed two burns to leave our orbit, and both of those have apparently malfunctioned. It has been paused in a “safe” mode for the time being so that the Russians can check if it’s a software problem (fixable) or a hardware problem (not fixable).

(via The Planetary Society)

Source: planetary.org

28 Notes/ Hide

  1. clockworktardis reblogged this from abcstarstuff and added:
    Yeah…. something tells me the Russians did a dumb here. I hope not, but…
  2. intranaut reblogged this from abcstarstuff
  3. abcstarstuff reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  4. oldmanyellsatcloud reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  5. tahanista reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  6. memonite reblogged this from realfakescientist and added:
    Feel bad for Russia. They can’t catch a break in regards to space travel. I know that feel Russia =/
  7. sonicalchemist reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  8. realfakescientist reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
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  13. nebachanezar reblogged this from jtotheizzoe and added:
    These people are...ride into space now…
  14. expectations-n-reality reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  15. jtotheizzoe posted this

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