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Russian Official Implies Foul Play In Mars Probe Failure
Back in November, Russia launched the Phobos-Grunt probe on a mission to return a soil sample from Mars' largest moon. Sadly, the probe malfunctioned, and never left orbit. It's due to crash into the Indian Ocean this weekend. An anonymous reader points out some interesting comments from a Russian official, Vladimir Popovkin, who obliquely suggested that interference from other countries was a possible cause of the failure. Quoting:
"Mr. Popovkin’s remarks to the newspaper Izvestia were the first high-level suggestion of nefarious interference. A retired commander of Russia’s missile warning system had speculated in November that strong radar signals from installations in Alaska might have damaged the spacecraft. 'We don’t want to accuse anybody, but there are very powerful devices that can influence spacecraft now,' Mr. Popovkin said in the interview. 'The possibility they were used cannot be ruled out.' ... Mr. Popovkin did not directly implicate the United States in the interview. But he said 'the frequent failure of our space launches, which occur at a time when they are flying over the part of Earth not visible from Russia, where we do not see the spacecraft and do not receive telemetric information, are not clear to us,' an apparent reference to the Americas."
You want to fuck with us, fine. Build your own rocket, yankees.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
... Phobos Grunt? We all know what happens on Phobos when you get a grunt up there. IDDQD, Russia, IDDQD!
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Russia should just admit to its failures, and move on. From what I've read, Russia's high-technology infrastructure is held together with band-aids® and chewing gum. They should concentrate upon repairing their space exploration foundation, then make the attempts to explore Mars.
Most likely, someone came back in a time machine to sabotage the launch to prevent the return of samples to Earth that are contaminated with Martian Hemmorhagic Fever and save billions of people.
'the frequent failure of our space launches, which occur at a time when they are flying over the part of Earth not visible from Russia, where we do not see the spacecraft and do not receive telemetric information, are not clear to us,'
We are to believe that the Russians are completely blind when the spacecraft are on the other side of the Earth? They have no satellites relaying telemetry? Laughable. (Apparently, so is their space program).
And with that goes blaming everyone except yourself for your public failures.
When science from another country fails, it is still a tragedy to the US. We are not in a cold war any more - the loss of a sattelite, or a probe, is a huge loss for everyone. Russia may be upset but unfortunately it would not be in US interests to intentionally destroy a probe that we cannot ourselves replicate (due to lack of funds or lack of interest.)
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Maybe this also account for the 20 feet of snow Alaska is getting too.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Whenever one is dealing with sending rockets to Mars, particularly Phobos, once has to take into account some pretty basic facts about Phobos:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leather_Goddesses_of_Phobos
Once you deal with that, then you can start blaming Eskimos in North America for downing your rocket.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
"It's a feature of space launch trajectories that orbital adjustments must be made halfway around the first orbit to circularize and stabilize subsequent orbits," the article
That submarine? Pipelines? The military planes which crash and burn at every air show in the world?
Russia still can't get over the fact that, in terms of being some sort of global player they're about as important as Spain. They didn't have any problems when they were sealing dogs in rockets and bunging them into orbit - that's about their level.
One of my co-workers is Russian, and he still keeps in touch with friends and family back home. We've been discussing the recent anti-government protests in Moscow, and he says that the government-controlled media (which includes all of TV and radio, and many of the newspapers) has gone into overdrive accusing the U.S. for being behind almost everything that's currently going wrong in Russia. In his words, "Blaming America is all they have left."
Implying that the U.S. is responsible for their spacecraft failure is just part of that game. Russia has been launching spacecraft for decades, and it is silly to think that they didn't learn how to deal with contingencies such as deliberate jamming long ago.
Attempting the most ambitious interplanetary mission ever with low budget, insufficient testing and no recent interplanetary flight experience.
Russian President Medvedev threatened to prosecute those responsible for the space failures. No surprise that the individuals in question are now looking to blame someone else.
Interference among the RF spectrum occurs all the time. I don't doubt that something some country or another has done could interfere with it. Now whether it was the US, China, or some other organization, it still might be accidental.
Those who live by the sword, get shot by those who live by the gun...
On Nov 9, 2011 I unintentionally pointed my new 5mw green laser pen into the sky.
Sorry Phobos-Grunt, I didn't see you there.
I blame the failure of the Mars Climate Orbiter on the French insistence of forcing the world to go metric. "The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it."
Regrettably, the russians have gone back to that silly Cold War mentality. Their own propaganda tells them constantly that they are unique, superior to the others, and surrounded by vile enemies that miss no chance to do harm to russia. Recall that when their submarine Kursk exploded and sank, the first instinctive reaction of the regime and its propaganda was to blame a US sub for colliding with, and thus sinking, Kursk.
the problem with these are, first of all you'll be hard pressed to maintain the same exact location on high ocean. you cant just drop anchor in a 8,000 m deep part of the ocean. so, the ship that carries the equipment to do the telemetry would need to be checking out its own location continually itself. and then it would need to compare this with the location received from the craft and analyze it. or send both to the central system (or whatever) they have to analyze it.
leaving that aside, any kind of weather conditions at the point the ship is would affect what you get. ranging from storms to overcast skies. these also affect land based systems, but land based systems do not need to seek evacuation from a storm - they just shut in most of the time. also, other land based locations would make up for reduced efficiency of the one afflicted - to do that in sea you need to keep many ships out, and it would be expensive. in addition, the frequency and mobility of storms for land based installations would be lower since a lot of land features stop or prevent storms (high mountains, different geographical areas) whereas a sea is an open environment in which storm can go anywhere depending on current and atmosphere.
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He must be referring to the dark side of the Earth.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
someone else's responsibility!
That's childish!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
and why there are lots of high power RF coming out of alaska, a desolate place of the world, again ?
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No press conference from K'Breel, speaker for the council ?!
Must not be true then.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
We've been discussing the recent anti-government protests in Moscow, and he says that the government-controlled media (which includes all of TV and radio, and many of the newspapers) has gone into overdrive accusing the U.S. for being behind almost everything that's currently going wrong in Russia.
hasnt it recently leaked that u.s. secret services were behind orchestrating the 'arab spring' that happened around middle east - which hit all of the countries that had u.s. unfriendly governments, but conveniently skipped u.s. backers like jordan, saudi arabia (the hellhole), bahrain and so on ? the minor protest that ensued at the end of all arab spring in bahrain was suppressed violently by saudi arabian forces which bahrain govt. requested. but nothing happened. in contrast, entire arab spring started from a single street salesman burning himself in tunusia ?
i dont think it necessitates any explanation now. we have discussed innumerable articles with news on how the u.s. secret services were using social media, internet as a weapon against unfriendly countries in slashdot.
you can rest assured that there is some u.s. friendly clique that is funded by u.s. in russia, just like how there was the muslim brotherhood, an u.s. backed islamist organization, behind ALL the 'revolutions' in all the arab countries, without exception ; they were working for it for 10 years in libya. they were the main force behind egypt's. and in both cases they immediately called for sharia law and also moved to appease certain u.s. interests with awards of contracts.
unfortunately it is a dirty world.
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But he said 'the frequent failure of our space launches, which occur at a time when they are flying over the part of Earth not visible from Russia, where we do not see the spacecraft and do not receive telemetric information, are not clear to us,' an apparent reference to the Americas.
It is thought inducing. Specifically:
1) Reference(s) please to 'frequent' failures without known explanation.
2) Most of the Earth is not visible from Russia. Are these 'frequent' failures all over the same part of the Earth, or is he playing with words?
3) Why do they not receive telemetric information there? They have other satellites to transmit to. A relay should not be difficult to establish. Are these things getting fried there, or could they download this data when the probe is back over Russia (or at least visible from Russia...) if they had saved the data? The probe under discussion is still in orbit- is it still communicating? The BBC article says it "went missing shortly after takeoff in November is due to crash land on Earth this weekend". I'm not sure how the BBC puts those conflicting details in the same sentence, but keep up the typical good work BBC.
4) Do they launch with different trajectories? What is the success rate of those launches?
5) A radar pulse powerful enough to fry a rocket would be detectable far beyond the vicinity of the rocket. Have they detected evidence of such a pulse? Have they failed to detect such evidence during a failed launch?
6) If their probe is not designed to withstand strong EM radiation, why are they a) launching it over a known source of strong EM radiation, b) sending it to Mars in the first place?
7) If it is known that the probe has design problems, and will probably fail its mission, sabotaging the launch is an excellent way to CYA.
Their own propaganda tells them constantly that they are unique, superior to the others, and surrounded by vile enemies that miss no chance to do harm to russia
that was exactly the case. the moment revolution happened in russia, the leader of the FREE world, great britain, landed with 18 other 'free' countries to suppress the 'rebellion' of the people and reinstate tzar and aristocracy in russia.
when they failed, they withdrew their military forces, and this time started to fund the white russians (Royalists) with arms and gold. to kill their own countrymen. when they were beaten too, they started to set up alliances and surround the country, leading to the cold war. the only intermediate pause was in between 2 world wars, and that was thanks to nazis.
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he is. the other side of the world, is closed to russians due to being anglo-american aligned. that's why nato has echelon stations in new zealand, whereas russia does not have a listening station in south africa.
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it's a great place to put high power HF, VHF and UHF for probing atmosphere and van allen radiation belts, which is what HAARP is for. Every dumb ignorant wingnut blames HAARP for hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes....nice to see Russian official sink to that level of brainlessness.
Uzbeks drank all the battery fluid. (c) SCTV
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13237153
It's stupid and transparent and will ultimately backfire.
I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.
Well, I dont know anything about it being used to damage satellites but... My father used to be a Radar tech for the airforce in the 60s/70s and worked on bases all over the world. For a while he worked up in Alaska and said the radar installations there were orders of magnitude more powerful than anything he'd ever seen. According to him the old wives tales about cooking a chicken in front of a radar dish are generally BS, but certainly true in Alaska. I guess radar arrays have giant magnets in them (for what purpose I do not know) but the magnets they used in Alaska were so large/powerful that he brought a damaged one home and set it by the door to keep the dog from getting outside. If the dog came anywhere near it the thing would yank on its collar and scare the crap out of it. That's a strong magnet...
Again, I don't know about using them as weapons, but the radar we have in Alaska is certainly powerful.
Blaming HAARP for weird weather isn't brainless. That's how the program was sold to the US military, unless you want to admit that the Pentagon was brainless. The reality seems to be that the scientists wanted funding and knew that the military is gullible.
Think globally but act within local variable scope.
Right. Now, how did we manage to get the satellite to point it's solar panels away from the sun?
I thought the theory as to why the spacecraft is in a stable, albeit backwards, orientation was simple: there are enough air molecules in that orbit to apply pressure to the large solar panels, which causes drag and thus rotates the craft so the panels are towards the back. Just like a shuttlecock in badminton.
Better known as 318230.
High-power phased array transmiter. It works by hitting the ionosphere with a radio beam and observing what happens, sort of like a highly specialised atmospheric radar. Russia actually has their own equivilent, slightly more dated, called the Sura Ionospheric Heating Facility. Works in exactly the same manner.
Scientific instrumentation is usually available for rent on a timeshare basis once a proble's initial mission is done. So if a US team wanted to run an experiment on a live probe, they could pay a fraction of the cost to rent the time from Russia. This is the difference between an experiment getting done and one not getting done. From a scientific research perspective, deliberately sabatoging someone else's work is also shooting yourself in the foot. Pay Russia a million bucks to rent two day's time in the Martian atmosphere, or pay a billion bucks to send your own problem with no guarantee it will succeed...
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
A problem for Mr Popovkin's blame-game, is that Phobos-Grunt did not pass over Alaska until several hours after it failed.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse
I doubt Putin has much to do with it. Conspiracy theories have always been very popular in that part of the world. It's unusual to see a publich official spouting off in that manner, but it's not particularly surprising either.
He's just trying to get a job on the Russian version of US talk radio
Someone was just sitting there with a powerful space toy, by themselves, as the boss was out, with no orders or anything and went to his coworker.
'Hey..pssst..hey..hey look..it's that Russian space probe..watch this. No really, just watch. I'm going to point our radar at it..shhh..quiet...okay shh...heh heh...okay...watch. (sets to full power.,..bwaroongwwwrerrooonng) 'Omg omg it's backwards, look! (lots of giggle, snickering and almost falling over) shh don't tell anyone we'll get in so much trouble...okay quiet quiet, supervisor is coming from break.
Supervisor: Anything happen while I was gone?
Guy who fapped satillite: (Barely holding laughter) No..no nothing at all...just..you know..scanning n stuff...
Of course it's not their fault. Why take the responsibility when you can blame some unnamed country with radar installations in Alaska! At least when we crashed a several planetary exploration satellites, NASA admitted they goofed and used kilometers instead of feet (or something like that). Rockets and satellites are fairly common, but it still is rocket science and malfunctions do occur. Too bad the US stopped the shuttle program, for a fee they could have retrieved it for the Russians.
Something not working out at home? Blame either the US, Israel, or Islam if you're one of the first two.
Fail at anything = Blame America.
Offer up some kind of evidence or we'll just respond that actually it was your mother.
That's right... your mom. There's just as much evidence backing that... eg none.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
RE:"2) Most of the Earth is not visible from Russia. Are these 'frequent' failures all over the same part of the Earth, or is he playing with words?" Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house..
"If the only tool that you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Donny Rumsfeld
America now also uses Russian rockets, this setback in the Russian space program hurts them just as much.
it never ends. I lived in the EU last decade and remember listening to Russian English news after one of their subs sank. They were hysterical that a US sub that arrived in the area to help was actually only pretending to help to cover up the fact that it had secretly sunk the sub itself. There is a significant faction still in power that blames everything that goes wrong on sabotage by the West. They are not friendly.
"I didn't spend six years in Evil Medical School to be called 'Mr.Evil,' thank you very much!"
It's not always about us... he's clearly trying to Blame Canada.
People still harping about the evil that that place supposedly does.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
What's next? The Zionists have a base on the dark side of the moon to shoot down probes that are successfully launched?
TFA is firewalled, so I only have the quote to go by, but the first thing I have to ask is, why? If it's truly a Mars mission designed to land on a moon and return as advertised, what possible reason would any other country have to prevent that?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
That's what they want you to think!
approach is failing. Creating an enemy to be angry at helps politician create a them to use for FUD.
Its a ridiculous proposal. The US has nothing to gain, and need to Russians to keep send stuff to space. There is no win in doing this.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
3) ... The BBC article says it "went missing shortly after takeoff in November is due to crash land on Earth this weekend". I'm not sure how the BBC puts those conflicting details in the same sentence, but keep up the typical good work BBC.
Not exactly conflicting. By "went missing", they mean they weren't able to establish a communications link with it. It was then subsequently found both visually by amateur astronomers and by radar tracking stations. This allowed an orbital trajectory to be determined, and also indicated that it was tumbling. So while they aren't able to communicate with it, they know exactly where it is and where it is going.
that is urban legend bullshit. the purpose of HAARP is well known, and was funded for that purpose: ionospheric research. The experiments are open, researchers and students come their from all over the world without security clearance, there are open house tours for the public.
the problem is, see, despite u.s. has an extensive satellite network, it still uses ground based monitoring stations to monitor even the shuttle. at least, it did. so, apparently there are some important stuff that cant just be done through satellites.
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what were the purposes of various secret programs of the past, now declassified, you think ? you will find even stupider excuses for those programs, totally irrelevant to what they were made for. just go through the disclosed stuff.
actually proposing that high powered electromagnetic fields cannot affect the weather whereas the entire planet is an electromagnet maintaining a huge magnetic field itself, is stupid.
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Other countries? You've got to look at who would really have benefited from the failure. Who also caused the problems with other Mars explorers. Metric v. Imperial? A good excuse, but who managed to make sure the units weren't converted correctly? Who ensured that the "successful" Mars rovers landed on particularly uninteresting parts of the planet? There's really only one choice: The Martian Intelligence Service. Clearly they don't want us Earthlings to know what they're cooking up out there. Probably because it's some kind of world-destroying weapon poised to turn Earth into a second asteroid belt.
or is it because there has been an attempt to set up a clique to control russia just like the cliques set up in entire middle east and balkans ?
just a few years ago, russian government has shut down all operations of a turkey based islamist 'charity' organization - hundreds of schools, dormitories they set up in russia were closed and taken into russian ministry of education's control in one day. in contrast, the governments of tunusia, syria, egypt, libya were not able to do that, or have not done that. all of them were exclusively toppled by the organization named 'muslim brotherhood' - which orchestrated all the revolution and all the digitization that went with it, apparently prepared beforehand for the eventuality.
in the wake of these, it is naive to say that the opposition in russia is just there because of the need for opposition. russia, and china are the only two countries on this planet in which american corporate interests do not have a clout to have what they want done.
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Hmm.. knowing how the military plays with acronyms I always had a gut feeling that HARP was used to stimulate the ionosphere. Have you ever seen what's constructed there ?
As we all know, the Nazis have a base on the dark side of the moon since the end of WW2.
They used one of their UFO's to interfere with Phobos-Grunt, as they are scared of Russia confirming existence of their secret base when the probe passes by on its way to Mars.
They're not worried about the US as
a) The US already found out when Werner Von Braun joined the US "paperclip" project.
b) With the demise of NASA's Apollo and space shuttle projects, the US no longer qualify as a space-capable government.
The moon nazis are now however significantly worried about the British, specifically Richard Branson. Wait for all the mysterious UFO sightings and technical problems during the first flights of Whiteknight2/Spaceship2.
We have shot dead at least 1262 Hydrogen powered USA CIA Agents. Just watch this execution of a CIA agent Amir Mirza In Iran. This will be shown to American's live on TV as a warning.
If you value life; China, Russia, Poland, North Korea, Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan and and Iraqis are backing Iran. Who do you think will win?
The United Skates of America are playing with fire..... and as we say you might have won the war but your never won the battle.
Just do not go there.
All cows eat grass!
What Mr Popovkin is suspicious of is the fact that the failures occur during the time the spacecraft is flying over US territory. And if for some reason the US wanted to damage the receiver of the satellite, that is possible using HPM (High Power Microwave) unless the receiver is specifically designed to defend against that by using limiter diodes between the receiver and the antenna. The only issue is that these protection techniques introduce additional loss, usually on the order of 1 or 2dB, which makes the receiver's front-end preamplifier less sensitive and directly adds to the receiver noise figure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_figure
There are other naturally occurring HPM events though, such as lightning strikes in the Earth atmosphere. The satellite antenna looking down on the Earth receives those broadband HPM events too, if they occur within the beamwidth of the antenna (or the antenna sidelobes).
But why would the US want to damage a Russian Mars probe? That doesn't seem to be something that would be in the US's interest.
Marvin the Martian, of course!
but it only takes a strip of cloth to stop an American satellite.
Their they're doing there hair.
When you screw-up, blame "nefarious outside forces."
Works every time.
Regards;
i didnt say i was hypothesizing. i described what happened in turkey in the last 15 years. and it had no exaggerations or metaphors in it. not only that, but it didnt happen outside my social circle, my own direct life experience either - a lot of it was experienced first hand, through relatives or friends or classmates. all of these were being openly discussed and criticized in national newspapers until 5 years ago. 5 years ago the current islamist party then in power started to come down on any media outlet that was discussing these openly, and foreclose on their assets through dubious tax investigations, then selling them to prominent islamist figures from their own community through 0 interest, very long term loans from government's lending bank.
currently prime minister of turkey regularly calls the remaining media holdings' execs to meetings and tells them what he does not want to be discussed in media. and everyone obeys.
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