Brazil observers saw NOTHING -- no flash, no indication of ANY plume -- so it's safe to conclude the failure was on the commanding side, not the engine side?
I wonder, do we need two threads?
Ouch! Shades of Akatsuki, but possibly no second chance...
Highly unlikely. Russia has no ASAT capacity. Nor do they have ABMs that can be modified to act as ASATs, like the SM-3 could.
more than Akatsuki, it's shades of Nozomi and CONTOUR. and the Russians did the same bad choice that doomed these missions: having no ground stations tracking the burn.
Quote from: plutogno on 11/10/2011 02:40 pmmore than Akatsuki, it's shades of Nozomi and CONTOUR. and the Russians did the same bad choice that doomed these missions: having no ground stations tracking the burn.Lack of telemetry coverage had nothing to do with the failures. It just made the failure investigations harder.
Lack of telemetry coverage had nothing to do with the failures. It just made the failure investigations harder.
The latest rumour on NK has it that the low-gain omnidirectional antenna is not visible from the ground stations as the first fuel tank (the one that was supposed to be disposed of after the first burn) covers it. Which in turn means that they cannot reset the spacecraft and send orders (the directional antennas have really small field of view so chances of a signal being in the way are non-existent). If that is the case, is there any chance that they could get lucky and get a shot at the directional receivers or perhaps put enough power so that the craft could detect the input on the low-gain antenna?
Sorry, I have to leave you again... I will report more news (if there are any) about three hours later