

Russia’s Failed Mars Probe Crashes Into Pacific - diwank
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/16/science/space/russias-phobos-grunt-mars-probe-crashes-into-pacific.html?_r=1

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Qz
That "powerful radar antenna in Alaska" is the infamous H.A.A.R.P.:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haarp>

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ChuckMcM
I watched for it but alas I did not see it :-(

I find the allegation of nefarious action in the Western Hemisphere kind of
strange. And I find it even more strange that we don't let the Russians build
a telemetry station somewhere useful over in the western half of the world.
Surely an installation in Cuba could cover most 50 degrees north to 50 degrees
south.

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ars
Who is this mysterious "we"?

You don't really need all that much permission to build a receiving station in
the US. I bet they just don't want to pay for it.

To get data from LEO orbit all you need is a small satellite dish.

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ChuckMcM
Good question, when I wrote that I was thinking "the United States government"
which, post Cuban Missile crisis, might seem to be the people who don't
necessarily need to approve but must not disapprove of such assets appearing
in the western hemisphere. Sort of like the Russians objecting to radar
systems in eastern Europe.

Generally when I look at the sort of receiving stations [1] that NASA runs
they have a number of large steerable dish antennas, presumably a big data
pipe from there to the rest of the NASA network.

Clearly something that is in the 'footprint' of satellites downlinking to the
US includes sensitive military satellites, so one might want to mitigate
interception of those signals.

So for Phobos-Grunt and others it is more than just 'getting data from LEO'
its also being able to "look into" LEO with RADAR perhaps to find out where
that dead hunk of metal is that should be sending data, or more likely its
pointing its transmitter at an odd angle and you can only get its
transmissions when its uncontrolled slow spin points is somewhat 'down'.

[1] <http://www.gb.nrao.edu/ovlbi/OVLBI.html>

~~~
ars
Those huge steerable dishes are for talking to deep space - like the Voyager
probes.

For LEO satellites like the one we are talking about you don't need anything
like that. Think about the dishes you see for satellite TV - they are tiny.
That's all you need - and those talk to GEO, which is much farther.

You don't need radar either - the orbit is well known from when it flies over
your main base. Radar doesn't have the ability to detect spin and orientation
anyway, for that you use a large optical telescope - which again, you don't
need permission to use.

As for the military satellites, those are routinely cataloged and tracked by
amateurs (with optical telescopes), the US doesn't do anything to stop them.
It wishes it could, but it can't, so doesn't try.

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ChuckMcM
Ok, fair points all, so do you have a theory why the Russian's tolerate a
'radio shadow' when their orbital gear is over the western hemisphere?

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stfp
Just out of curiosity, as english is not my 1st language: does "Russia’s
Failed Mars Probe" sounds a bit weird to anyone else? I mean I think these
things are usually worded more neutral - like "Russian Mars probe crashes into
Pacific".

"England's failed passenger steamship crashes into Iceberg" would give me the
same feeling - schadenfreude ?

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Natsu
It doesn't sound weird to me.

It's saying that the probe was a failure, not the people who built it, so it
just doesn't sound that bad. Here, it just means "broken," and you can't
really argue that it wasn't broken when it crashed into the ocean instead of
going to Mars.

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ricksta
Anyone felt $170m for the Russian spacecraft is super inexpensive relative to
what NASA spends on theirs?

eg. $850mil for this Mars Exploration Rover
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover>

~~~
ars
$170mil sounds pretty expensive for something that doesn't work. And it was
predicted not to work even before it launched, since they didn't spend enough
money to build it properly.

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exDM69
No images of the re-entry in the article :( Anyone seen any article with
photography of the event?

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gojomo
Space probes sometimes have tiny nuclear reactors, so that a tiny amount of
mass can generate electricity for decades.

Any chance this one did? (Or just some nasty rocket fuel?)

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Natsu
HuffPo says that it does not contain an RTG[1], so I doubt it has any nuclear
material on board. RTGs are built with scenarios like this in mind, though.

Concerning the rocket fuel, Wikipedia[2] says that it contains hydrazine and
nitrogen tetroxide, but has a source claiming that it will almost certainly
get destroyed during reentry.

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/10/phobos-grunt-
russia...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/10/phobos-grunt-russia-
mars_n_1085833.html)

[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fobos-Grunt#Risk>

