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#700
by
Ben the Space Brit
on 28 Nov, 2011 21:08
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FWIW, to me "contacted but no telemetry" means that they 'poked' the probe with a signal and there was a 'squawk' of radio noise back but nothing that is usable data.
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#701
by
tolis
on 28 Nov, 2011 21:16
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ok, acknowledging receipt of uplinked commands but not actually sending back any data.
Please understand, I was just giving one possible interpretation of "contacted, didn't receive telemetry". I am not making any claim about what actually happened.
As far as planned burn goes, I don't think the publicly available information is sufficient to make any meaningful speculation. We don't know much about the state of the spacecraft, we don't know what the Russians got from the telemetry they did receive, we don't know what sort of burn they are trying to do.
The ESA statements indicate that they did not expect an immediate indication of success from their attempts to uplink the burn commands.
What a sad situation that our best source of information is ESAs twitter feed 
Indeed, I do understand and sympathise.
Information, information, my kingdom for some information..
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#702
by
hop
on 28 Nov, 2011 21:19
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Weather permitting, observers in northern WA / southern BC have a chance to get the scoop on any successful orbit raising maneuver.
Per
http://www.satflare.com/track.php?q=phobos#MAP there's a good pass over Vancouver around Tue, 29/11/2011 01:18 UTC (Mon, 28/11/2011 17:18 local) and another around Wed, 30/11/2011 01:12 UTC (Tue, 29/11/2011 17:12)
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#703
by
iamlucky13
on 28 Nov, 2011 21:21
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(Note: the Lavochkin presentation is included below. That's where the graphics showing the Russians' overly-ambitious planetary exploration plans are from.)
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1980/1
Red Planet blues
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, November 28, 2011
That was a very good read, not least because it deals with a question most of us would want addressing - such as what do they do next....possible cooperation and competition.
Thank you. Unfortunately, I think they are headed for trouble. That's because of several things. First, Medvedev's comments are exactly the kind of thing that sends people running. If you are a young engineer/scientist in their space program, barely making a living, and suddenly the president of your country is joking about shooting you, would you want to stay where you are or start sending your resume to ESA colleagues?
Second, their proposed future plans (just look at those slides--33 missions in 8 years!) are totally unrealistic. That indicates that this is a program that is not grounded in reality. They really need to get much better focused. But that may not be possible given all their other problems.
Keep in mind that looking for someone to blame is not unique to Russian management. There is a tough discernment to figure out how to get rid of genuinely incompetent people without culling those who are competent but did not have the resources and or experience (of which they're gaining a lot of the latter right now) to succeed. So I agree a witch hunt is one of the worst possible responses.
The usual result is you find a complex chain of failure involving relatively subtle oversights or dealing with limited time and money involving large numbers of people in multiple groups - there often is not one person or group to blame for a failure, but because the powers that be have decided someone will be punished, they ultimately make a nearly arbitrary choice that closely resembles punishment of the innocent, as codified in the
Six phases of project management.
Anyways, I still see comments, even news editorials, condemning NASA for not doing bloodletting in the wake of Challenger, Columbia, Mars Climate Orbiter, Mars Polar Lander, etc. Even more fierce are those with political ties, like the Solyndra debacle.
I really want to disagree with you that Russia probably should not simply build another Fobos-Grunt, but I reluctantly concede you make a compelling point about their over-ambition in the context of reviving a dormant industry. Fobos-Grunt is a really cool mission concept. I really want to see it happen. But it is also quite complex.
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#704
by
olasek
on 28 Nov, 2011 23:15
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Keep in mind that looking for someone to blame is not unique to Russian management.
Agreed but can you imagine if NASA had comparable string of failures? There would be calls to disband NASA, public outcry for wasted funds, cartoons in the newspapers, comedians would have a field day, etc. Punishing individuals would take a secondary importance to getting to the bottom of the larger issues like how NASA does business, what are the underlying causes, etc, etc. There would be congressional investigations, other independent investigations, hearings, testimonies, reports, reviews, everything in public view. Nothing of the kind is happening in Russia even though theoretically they have so called 'democracy'. I don't hear Duma (Russian parliament) members calling for anything of the sort, in fact I don't hear a squeak. Therefore I am afraid apart from some personel changes (which are normal everywhere) there will be little change of any substance, ultimately business will be as usual.
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#705
by
edkyle99
on 29 Nov, 2011 00:44
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Keep in mind that looking for someone to blame is not unique to Russian management.
Agreed but can you imagine if NASA had comparable string of failures? ...
You're being facetious, right? You do remember 14 lost astronauts? Two lost orbiters? An out of focus Hubble? More than one lost Mars probe - one due to metric/imperial unit confusion? Etc? The investigations that uncovered management and engineering incompetence? Not to mention the massively costly DoD mission failures of the late 1990s and program failures of the 2000s, etc.
- Ed Kyle
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#706
by
robertross
on 29 Nov, 2011 00:50
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Keep in mind that looking for someone to blame is not unique to Russian management.
Agreed but can you imagine if NASA had comparable string of failures? ...
You're being facetious, right? You do remember 14 lost astronauts? Two lost orbiters? An out of focus Hubble? More than one lost Mars probe - one due to metric/imperial unit confusion? Etc? The investigations that uncovered management and engineering incompetence? Not to mention the massively costly DoD mission failures of the late 1990s and program failures of the 2000s, etc.
- Ed Kyle
All true, and probably enough said on that topic here. Let's keep on track.
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#707
by
olasek
on 29 Nov, 2011 00:52
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You do remember 14 lost astronauts?
17, right?
I do remember that, I do remember even reading extensive reports, recommendations, etc. In fact I still have the full Columbia report on my desk with all the Scott Hubbard's famous foam-shooting experiments. Do we ever see a comparable report from Russians? So what's exactly your point, sorry I don't follow.
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#708
by
ChrisC
on 29 Nov, 2011 01:06
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All true, and probably enough said on that topic here. Let's keep on track.
Yes, please.
Again.
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#709
by
Rocket Science
on 29 Nov, 2011 01:23
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#710
by
Chris Bergin
on 29 Nov, 2011 01:43
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Yes, good work RS - let's keep this thread clear of food fights. Won't delete anything, the redirect from RS is all we need.
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#711
by
Svetoslav
on 29 Nov, 2011 07:18
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#712
by
Ben the Space Brit
on 29 Nov, 2011 08:39
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http://ria.ru/science/20111129/501202381.html
We've been informed that the attempts to raise the orbit of P-G have failed...
What is really important to know is: did the probe receive and acknowledge the instructions? If yes, then the problem is elsewhere. If not, then the likelihood of an electronic/control system failure has increased.
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#713
by
Apollo-phill
on 29 Nov, 2011 10:51
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Are there no on-orbit sats that would allow transmission of commands towards F-G more frequently eg a TDRS type sat ?
Just a thought..
A-P
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#714
by
Lee Jay
on 29 Nov, 2011 10:57
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Are there no on-orbit sats that would allow transmission of commands towards F-G more frequently eg a TDRS type sat ?
Wrong band.
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#715
by
JimO
on 29 Nov, 2011 12:45
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Can any of our fluent Russian-speakers who are watching the NK and other blogs on Fobos-Grunt provide any summaries of what is known about three items:
1. What exactly IS the orbit-raising plan? Presumably it is just the first of the two planned insertion burns from Flight Day 1, the one that depletes and drops the toroid aft propellant tank complex. But specifically, what was the commanded ignition time? This can tell us how they are planning to shape the orbit on future maneuvers. It also can help us alert ground observers who may be able to witness the plume [or its absence] and the tank propellant venting.
2. What if anything has been learned about vehicle status from the short bursts of telemetry?
3. What is the speculation about the remarkable "apogee creep" exhibited for several days early in the mission, and hypothetically attributed to propellant venting, thruster firing, or some combination? The apparent cessation of this effect shortly before radio contact was first established may be a significant clue about vehicle status, but how has it been interpreted?
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#716
by
Ben the Space Brit
on 29 Nov, 2011 12:59
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Are there no on-orbit sats that would allow transmission of commands towards F-G more frequently eg a TDRS type sat ?
The answer is probably 'no'. The problem is that FG works on the X-Band; I doubt that any comm relay sats use that high frequency as it is exclusively used for interplanetary comms.
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#717
by
MP99
on 29 Nov, 2011 13:06
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3. What is the speculation about the remarkable "apogee creep" exhibited for several days early in the mission, and hypothetically attributed to propellant venting, thruster firing, or some combination? The apparent cessation of this effect shortly before radio contact was first established may be a significant clue about vehicle status, but how has it been interpreted?
If the sat is only using RCS for that portion of the orbit in sunlight, could that apply some bias that happened to circularise the orbit?
As the orbit precesses, perhaps the bias shifted such that it then stopped raising the perigee? Might explain why it stopped.
If the precession continues long enough, maybe the opposite will start to happen?
cheers, Martin
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#718
by
Sparky
on 29 Nov, 2011 14:08
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Are there no on-orbit sats that would allow transmission of commands towards F-G more frequently eg a TDRS type sat ?
Just a thought..
A-P
The Soviets used to have such a network called Luch, but it fell out of service after the Cold War. The Russians are planning to rebuild the system, however, and if I recall, the first launch is scheduled for December 11th. I'm not sure that it is capable of transmitting X-band, however.
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#719
by
alk3997
on 29 Nov, 2011 14:09
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For those who were earlier commenting about how the PG software still needed validation, I mentioned this was not unusual for an unmanned spacecraft. Usually (at least with recent spacecraft) only the early cruise software is tested and validated before launch and then the rest is uplinked on the way to the destination.
This articicle describes what is going on with the Curiousity software:
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/atlas/av028/111128cruise/Andy
