Phobos-Grunt: historical

[Dr Mordrid]

A frightening bit of Phobos-Grunt history by Russian space historian Anatoly Zak of RussianSpaceWeb.com. Truly scary.

Update: 2 pieces have broken off and some observers think it's tumbling.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/phobos_grunt_2011.html

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The fueling of the probe's cruise stage with pressurized gas and propellant components was completed sometimes before October 27 and the Chinese YH-1 micro-satellite was also fueled around the same time. The fueling of the Earth return vehicle was scheduled for October 27 and was confirmed as completed on November 1. In the meantime, the MDU propulsion unit was integrated with the transfer section, which served as an interface between the spacecraft and the second stage of the Zenit-2SB rocket.

Final tests uncover serious problems

On November 1, inside the MIK-31-40 assembly building, joint industrial teams had conducted tests of opening of the probe's solar panels, Roskosmos said, without much details. However only after the launch of the ill-fated mission, not unexpected stories started surfacing about numerous problems which had been uncovered during final tests in Baikonur.

As it transpired, engineers found that the polarity for the steering control of the main engine had been mistakenly switched over in the flight control software of the main BKU computer. Nobody knew how such a major problem could've been missed during supposedly thorough certification tests in Moscow. Initially, managers decided to limit corrective actions to re-soldering of respective cables. As a result, six cables had to be reconnected on a spacecraft fully loaded with toxic and explosive propellants. Similar attempts to do electric repairs on the fueled vehicle led to the mass loss of life in Baikonur in the aftermath of the infamous Nedelin disaster in 1960.

However, after these repairs, it had become clear that all control signals from multiple cables had been channeled to the same driving mechanism. This mistake could not be fixed by re-routing cables, instead requiring complex changes in the flight control software. Last updates to the programming software had to be added right at the launch site, leaving no time for a new round of tests. The incident was reported to the head of the Russian space agency, Vladimir Popovkin. (534)
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[MultimediaMan]

It's dead, Jim.

[Dr Mordrid]

A lot more than it could have been dead - soldering wires next a bunch of tanks full of monomethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide?

Ewwwwww....

[degrub]

just a matter of heat flux.....

[MultimediaMan]

The Russians don't like to fail; but when they do, they tend to fail BIG.

[Umfriend]

So, uhm, is all that toxic fuel gonna come crashing down on Earth somewhere?

[Dr Mordrid]

No problem. The fuel tanks are a thin, light aluminum-lithium alloy that will rupture high up during re-entry, at which time the heat will cook the fuel. There is a tiny source of Cobalt-57 on board that that would have been used to remotely recalibrate instruments, but its radioactivity is only a few times that of a smoke detector.

Now its loss is official -

December 8, 2011

Dear Colleagues,

As you may already know, the launch of the Phobos-Soil spacecraft was a failure. On November 8, 2011 the spacecraft was put into the near Earth orbit, however, the booster did not turn on, and, therefore, the spacecraft did not manage to change this initial orbit and transfer to the interplanetary trajectory. The reason of this failure has not been determined yet.

Immediately after this unpredictable event all forces of the mission control team were concentrated in order to attempt to establish communication with the spacecraft. Several foreign organizations, in particular, ESOC-ESA, DSN-JPL-NASA, NORAD-STRATCOM, numerous amateur observers tracked the spacecraft to establish communication with it and determine parameters of the orbit, its orientation and attitude. However, despite people being at work 24 / 7 since the launch, all these attempts have not yield any satisfactory results. We are grateful to our foreign colleagues, who provided us with every list of information about the spacecraft which was crucial at the time.

Currently, the spacecraft is rotating [tumbling] at the near Earth orbit, lowering every day, and we expect that it is to entry the atmosphere in several weeks. Lavochkin Association specialists will continue their attempts to establish connection with the spacecraft and send commands until the very end of its existence. We are working nevertheless on the issue of re-entry and probability of where and which fragments may hit the ground (if any). There is a sensitive matter that one of the scientific instruments (Messbauer spectrometer) contains radioactive material Co-57. However, the amount of Co-57 is about few (less than 10) micrograms, so that, according to our evaluations, no significant problems are is anticipated.

At present, the next steps of the Russian space science program on the Solar system exploration are being discussed. In accordance with the current plans, the next missions are Luna-Glob and Luna-Resource. As another possible additional step, at the moment ROSCOSMOS, ESA and NASA are discussing the collaboration on the ExoMars and Russian Mars-NET missions. Moreover, the Russian Academy of Sciences would like to prepare a new mission to Phobos. However, no decision has not been taken yet.

We would like to express our deep gratitude to You and all the scientists and specialists for collaboration on the Phobos-Soil Mission, preparation of scientific instruments and provision of ground support. We are deeply sorry about the failure of the Phobos-Soil Mission. We hope in future to continue our collaboration on space science projects.

Academician Lev Zelenyi
Director, Space Research Institute
Chair, Solar system exploration Board
The Russian Academy of Sciences