ROSCOSMOS - Phobos-Grunt Mission poster.
Jan. 15, 2012
Russia believes that the fragments of his defective Mars probe Phobos-Grunt fell Sunday in the Pacific Ocean to 24:45 (EST), said an official of the Ministry of Defense.
"Our calculations (...), the fall of fragments of the device Phobos-Grunt must have taken place at 21:45 Moscow time (12:45 in Montreal) in the Pacific Ocean," said Colonel Valery Zolotukhin cited Interfax news agency. Quoted by the state agency Itar-Tass, he said that the fragments had fallen to 1250 km west of the island of Wellington.
Image above: The Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR in Wachtberg, Germany has produced this image of Phobos-Grunt, created with the TIRA space observation radar. One can clearly see the extended solar panels (center) and the tank ring (bottom). Credit: Fraunhofer FHR.
The space forces of the Department of Defense controlled the final phase of the output of the orbit, he said. "This helped to predict with high probability the place and time of the fall of the device," said Colonel Zolotukhin.
The Russian space agency Roscosmos who struggled in recent days to say where the probe was about to fall could not be reached Sunday evening. The latest information available on its site and reports of the situation at 11:15 (EST) announced that the fall would occur between 12:50 ET 1:34 p.m. (EST) by designating the "midpoint" in the Atlantic Ocean.
A source in the space sector quoted by Ria Novosti agency, for its part said that the fragments fell into the Atlantic Ocean, near the Brazilian coast. Phobos-Grunt, launched on November 9, would move to a satellite of Mars, Phobos, and bring back samples, but failed to overcome the pull of Earth.
This Russian-language map depicts the latest re-entry prediction for Russia's failed Phobos-Grunt Mars Probe for Jan. 14, 2012. The map indicates that the 14-ton spacecraft could crash somewhere off the southwestern coast of South America on Jan. 15. Credit: Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos).
This unit at a cost of $ 165 million was to mark the return of Russia in interplanetary exploration, abandoned after the failure in November 1996 of the Mars 96, which had fallen into the Pacific Ocean.
Russia will struggle to establish the causes of this failure, said Sunday at the source in the Russian space agency quoted Interfax. "We have virtually no telemetry data from the device, the proxy data are not sufficient," said the official.
"I am sure that the conclusions of the inquiry will be based on assumptions and not on fact," he said.
Phobos-Grunt Mission description and re-entry animation
Phobos-Grunt, launched on November 9, would move to a satellite of Mars, Phobos, and bring back samples, but failed to overcome the pull of Earth. Since then, its orbit down slowly. This unit at a cost of $ 165 million was to mark the return of Russia in interplanetary exploration, abandoned after the failure in November 1996 of the Mars 96, which had fallen into the Pacific Ocean.
Russian space industry has had a bad year in 2011, the loss of Phobos-Grunt is one of five Russian launches have failed. The latest dates from December 23, when a communications satellite military and civilian fell in Siberia due to a failure of the Soyuz rocket carrying it. Worse, the failure of the August launch of a Soyuz supply ship to the International Space Station has paralyzed for about three months departures to the ISS.
Phobos-Grunt component details
Images, Text, Video, Credit: Roscosmos PAO / AFP / Fraunhofer FHR / AGI / Translation: Orbiter.ch.
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