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Phobos-Grunt Launches To Retrieve a Sample of Phobos
An anonymous reader writes with news that Russia's Phobos-Grunt spacecraft has launched, taking the first step on its mission to travel to Phobos, the larger of Mars' two moons. When (and if — see below) it lands on Phobos, the probe will collect a soil sample and attempt to return it to Earth.
"Russia’s Federal Space Agency said the craft separated successfully from the booster about 11 minutes later. ... The return vehicle is expected to carry up to 200 grams (7 ounces) of soil from Phobos back to Earth in August 2014. The $170 million endeavor would be Russia’s first interplanetary mission since Soviet times. A previous 1996 robotic mission to Mars ended in failure when the probe crashed in the Pacific following an engine failure."
Unfortunately, there appears to have been a problem with the launch. Details are uncertain at this point, but the probe reportedly made it to orbit intact, and the mission is not necessarily ruined.
...don't say the programming is wrong and it'll now take a chunk out of the Earth and fly it to Phobos!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
...don't say the programming is wrong and it'll now take a chunk out of the Earth and fly it to Phobos!
In Soviet Russia...
#DeleteChrome
Update 5:09 PST. The Phobos-Grunt spacecraft has not been found in its predicted orbit.
Update 5:45 PST. A Deep Space Network source indicates that the spacecraft is in safe mode, and the engine burn was never performed. The spacecraft could be reset, and the mission might be recoverable. Stay tuned.
Update 7:13 PST. Vladimir Putin has announced he will be going into orbit to save the mission. He plans to pilot his craft as close to the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft as possible. He will then exit the craft (EVA), remove his shirt and throw Phobos-Grunt to Mars.
#DeleteChrome
Mars is for Amerika. Venus is for Russia.
Seriously. Look at where each nation has had its successes and failures.
That must be the singulary most expensive stuff on the planet!
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
According to the latest news. Also failed to find the Sun, and there are three days of battery power left before it's dead. BTW grunt means soil in Russian
Uh, don't get me wrong here, it takes a lot of fuel and energy to get something to Mars.... and then back again. But the lunar moon lander returned with ~300 pounds of material. It seems that after all of the engineering, R&D money and development, it would only be an additional 1% to the project cost to bring back 10 pounds of the stuff. 7 oz is going to be hugely helpful to science, but most of the trip is spent coasting to and from it's destination - there isn't that much additional fuel involved in bumping the payload up from a single serving soda to a family size 12 pack, is there?
moox. for a new generation.
Due to an engine problem, the mission failed. Too bad.
The only way to reliably get from earth to phobos is teleporting via hell.
+1 piece of junk orbiting earth! 170 million$ burned. Didn't people the money here instead of orbiting earth?
First they send probes... then they make a colony researching interdimensional transport... This never works out.
Nobody cares what the CAPTCHA for your post was.
Grunt is a russian for a terrain.
I wonder if it might be possible to point a laser at the craft's solar panels to recharge its batteries? That is if it has opened its solar panels and they are pointing towards Earth at least some of the time?
I wonder how many NASA program names are rude words in Russian...
No sig today...
Actually, it's Russian for "soil", comes from German "grund"
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Yeah... ./ shows me that it links to FOX "News". Sorry mate. Ain't gonna fall for that. It's like the Goatse of news. If you like what you see, sonething is wrong with you. ;)
you're making it sound dirty. Please, continue.
rewriting history since 2109
Yes you are right, of course, I thought that "soil" is better a moment after I submitted the comment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leather_Goddesses_of_Phobos
I must be getting gold if this isn't the first thing someone thinks when they hear "Phobos."
Presumably you feel the same way about CNN, BBC, Reuters, the API, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, the NYT, Scientific American, and pretty much every single "news" blog connected to the internet? No? Then you're a big ol' hypocrite.
Oh no. Yep, they all have issues and nope, Fox comes to school on a very, very short bus.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
This sounds like the beginning of a bad scifi movie. You know, like the ones they used to show on that SyFy channel, until they started showing wrestling instead.
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The last time we sent something to Phobos and Demos to try and scan them...it was mysteriously destroyed. The last image showed a strange saucer-shaped shadow, if I remember correctly.
Am I the only one who read the words Phobos and Grunt like the announcer in Quake 3 when bots are joining a game?
To all newcomers - people here are very close-minded and can't handle complaints about Linux. Keep this in mind.
I can't help but believe that the real reason they're going to Phobos is to take a look at that "monument".
No. I don't "feel" the same way. I *know*. ^^
Or even better: I have enough observation that I am pretty damn sure in my theory, that ALL information that reaches my brain, is ALWAYS biased, and mostly bullshit. Where all "news sources" and most people are deep in the bullshit category. ^^
Your presumption, while valid, given the amount of people who actually think like you describe, does not fit me. Hence your conclusion is wrong too.
I barely trust what I see with my own eyes. ^^
With everything else, I have given up finding a "truth" (a word that, from a physics and neurology standpoint, is utter nonsense), and focus on how useful the information is for me (in the long run).
And those "news" organizations, as well as most people, are pretty damn retarded and often also pretty damn evil, which makes it no surprise, that it turned out to be generally pretty much completely worthless. ^^