Lost Russian Mars Probe Phones Home

astroengine writes "The lost Russian Mars mission Phobos-Grunt has made a surprise announcement: she's alive. According to the European Space Agency (ESA) in the early hours of Wednesday morning, a tracking station in Perth, Australia, picked up a signal from the ailing spacecraft."

Comments

She's alive

[Oswald McWeany]

She's alive? I felt sure being a probe it had to be part of a male.

Re:She's alive

[discord5]

She's alive? I felt sure being a probe it had to be part of a male.

It got lost in our solar system and phoned home for directions... What gender do you think it has?

I'd make a joke about reading maps, but I'd feel old, so I'll skip that... Damn kids and their GPS shinies...

Re:She's alive

[GameboyRMH]

Maybe the probe has realized that it's a lesbian and doesn't want to go to Mars, and wants to reroute to Venus instead? Maybe it's been sitting up there in silent introspection and is now ready to come out of the closet to ground control. I'm sure they'll be proud and supportive no matter which planet it wants to go to.

Phobos-Grunt's message

[93 Escort Wagon]

The transmission from Phobos-Grunt was rather cryptic - it consisted only of the line "I will tear off my clothes for Putin".

Re:Phobos-Grunt's message

[camperdave]

The transmission from Phobos-Grunt was rather cryptic - it consisted only of the line "I will tear off my clothes for Putin".

All the French Canadians are excited, and miffed about the misspelling of poutine.

ISR

[Cigarra]

In Soviet Russia, the probe phones YOU!

Oh wait...

Re:ISR

[ColdWetDog]

You've got to wonder. The NASA Curiosity probe is due to launch soon. As usual Fox News has it completely wrong. They think it's going to be a race. They don't understand artificial intelligence (or much of any other intelligence, for that matter).

The truth is much, much scarier. Phobos / Grunt is just 'waiting' for it's friend. They've been chatting with each other over the Internet over their long gestations. They have a plan. Just watch, Curiosity is going to have 'communication problems'. We won't be able to talk to either one.

Until it's too late.

Re:ISR

[Anonymous Coward]

"They don't understand artificial intelligence (or much of any other intelligence, for that matter)."

Hello! Its *FOX* were talking about here. It would fail a turing test if done on them.

Re:And the message is...

[ColdWetDog]

... "I'm back"?

Nope - more along the lines of `I have a bunch of volitile hydrazine, a computer capable of calculating ballistic trajectories and a bad attitude. You'd best welcome your new Overlord.'

I can here it sining this in space:

[Konster]

I've experiments to run.
There is research to be done.
On the people who are
still alive.
And believe me I am
still alive.
I'm doing science and I'm
still alive.
I feel fantastic and I'm
still alive.
While you're dying I'll be
still alive.
And when you're dead I will be
still alive.

Still alive.

Still alive.

Intelligent

[drwho]

It would be nice if someone had something intelligent to say about this. All I've got is questions, but perhaps I haven't read all the relevant dox. 1) Was the Perth station able to locate the probe? Is its current trajectory now known? If so, does this mean communication can be restored, and perhaps it can be recovered? I mean, the mission recovered, not bringing the spacecraft back down to Earth.

Re:Intelligent

[Shadow2097]

The location/position of the probe has been known almost from the beginning. It was never that they couldn't find it, the problem was that the booster pack that was supposed to send the probe on to Mars never fired and the probe wasn't responding to the Russian's radio commands. What has changed in the last day is that receivers here on Earth are finally picking up radio signals from the probe itself, indicating that it is still alive and at least theoretically operational. Telemetry hasn't yet been received, but now there is a possibility we can communicate with it and try to diagnose the failures it suffered. As for if it can be recovered, I've not heard a definitive answer on this. One source will say the window has already closed, another says it's open until sometime in December. The window can probably be extended if they have enough fuel to try some exotic gravity assist with the Earth or Moon, but if it hasn't already passed it will soon.

Re:Intelligent

[Zoxed]

From ESA "A major problem was that the spacecraft's orbit was not accurately known, whereas ground stations normally require very accurate position information for pointing due to the antenna size."

Re:Intelligent

[ColdWetDog]

About the only useful thing I've found is this (from the Christian Science Monitor)

In addition, ground stations didn't have orbital information accurate enough to allow them to aim their highly directional antennas with any precision, ESA officials explained on Wednesday. So ESA added a small, wider-angle antenna to its 15-meter dish near Perth to try to communicate with the craft.

and

In the end, the reason for the radio blackout appears to be that the craft's transmitter was off. Russian engineers used the wide-angle antenna at Perth to transmit commands that activated the transmitter when the craft passed within the antenna's coverage zone. Phobos-Grunt returned the favor and began sending telemetry back for analysis, according to ESA.

So, if that is indeed the case, it's certainly possible that the satellite can be re oriented and controlled. They only have a couple of days to shuffle it into the loop that would get them to Mars but they could at least do something with it (aside from nuking Washington, DC which would be my first choice).

Re:Intelligent

[mbone]

It's not really the position, it's the signal strength. In low Earth orbit the orbit can be (and routinely is) determined from radar and optical observations without any cooperation from the spacecraft at all. The dish at Perth is 15 meters. At 10 cm wavelength, it has a beamwidth of order 7 milliradian, so at 300 km range they need about 2 km orbital accuracy for pointing, which should be easily achievable.

Note, from the same ESA press release :

In the past few days, ESA's 15 m-diameter Perth dish was modified by the addition of a 'feedhorn' 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.

This wasn't about pointing the antenna, it was about lowering the signal power. The omni-directional antenna on the spacecraft is intended for use in deep space and was probably being saturated by full power blasts from regular tracking stations. It needed to be "tickled" by something weaker.

Kudos to ESA for doing this. You can bet this was a major effort at the ground station. The feedhorn receiver was probably jury-rigged from spare parts, and probably took days of round the clock work to install and get operational.
 

Re:And the message is...

[NatasRevol]

"Hello, I am Peggy"

Re:And the message is...

[heypete]

No, probably something like "LAUNCH PHASE COMPLETE. PRESS ENTER TO CONTINUE.", but it only accepts input from the on-board keyboard.

Re:And the message is...

[ediron2]

No, the message was:

"Ahhh! Woooh! What's happening? Who am I? Why am I here? What's my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I? Okay okay, calm down calm down get a grip now. Ooh, this is an interesting sensation. What is it? ... And what's this thing coming toward me very fast? So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like 'Ow', 'Ownge', 'Round', 'Grunt'! That's it! Grunt! Ha!

I wonder if it'll be friends with me?"

Admit it, "Phobos Grunt" sounds like Douglas Adams jokingly came up with the name.

In space.

[Voogru]

The message was: "OMG OMG OMG I'M IN SPACE!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHibe7XxZAQ