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Countdown to the Russian Mars probe collision with Earth
08.01.2012 / 15:10 h
Ignacio Ortega
Moscow, Jan 8 (EFE) .- The Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos, has begun the countdown to Earth collision with interplanetary station Phobos-Grunt, unable to reach the target orbit with one of the moons of Mars.
"According to the data in our possession and predictions of experts, fall within the vessel between 10 and 21 January with the 15th as the most probable date," said Roscosmos in a statement.
As to the place of the collision of the probe, which has wandered to drift around the planet since its launch on November 8, Roscosmos is more conservative and ensures that this can not be predicted 24 hours before it occurs .
At present, the radius of the probe falling -51.4 degrees north latitude and 51.4 degrees south latitude, stretching from London to the southern tip of the Americas.
Anyway, the Russians say the ship, which was to collect Martian soil samples and send them to Earth in 2014, poses no threat to our planet.
"The source of radioactivity (cobalt-57) installed in one of the scientific teams of the device (spectrometer) has a mass less than ten kilograms and represents no danger of radioactive contamination," said Roscosmos.
In addition, the Earth's surface will only be achieved by about 20-30 pieces of the ship with a joint mass shall not exceed 200 kilos.
The rest of the tube will disintegrate upon contact with the atmosphere, like the fuel carried by the Phobos-Grunt, which will burn about 100 kilometers high, which will help when their shells are aluminum.
"The spatial statistics shows that the space vehicles disintegrate almost entirely in the dense layers of the atmosphere and its fragments, usually do not cause damage," said Roscosmos.
In recent months two ships also rushed into the Earth: the U.S. weather satellite UARS, which fell in September in waters of the Pacific Ocean and the German ROSAT, that made him a month later in the Indian Ocean.
The Center for Space Reconnaissance General Russian Defense Ministry, which found a definite date and place of fall of UARS and ROSAT, guarded 24 hours a day orbital parameters of the station.
Images of Phobos-Grunt drop were captured this week by French amateur astronomer Thierry Legault, at the height of Nice on the French Mediterranean coast.
In the recording looming fuel tanks and solar panels deployed, but not operating, which explains the lack of communication with Earth since its launch.
The Phobos-Grunt was called to be the first spacecraft to land on the surface of Phobos, one of the two moons of the Red Planet to study the solar system starting material.
According to Igor Lisov, director of the magazine "News of Cosmonautics", "the station was designed and built with serious defects, since the control system to supply program."
"All this was seen coming from the start. The decision to launch the season with such defects was taken as the other two options, quit to launch and build a new ship, or postpone it two years were considered even less convenient," said Efe.
Now, he added, "it is clear that the new Russian interplanetary spacecraft will have to be designed differently."
The Russian launch program is in crisis after several accidents, including the first suffered in August last year in more than 30 years of operation by one of the Progress cargo, catering to the orbital outpost.
In this regard, Lisov explained that between the disintegration of the USSR (1991) and 2007 the Russian space program "State funding was below the subsistence minimum" and that the recent increase in investment will not be noticed in the quality of work another five years.
Added to this is "aging specialists, equipment obsolescence, the cessation of production of some components and materials and work stoppages in certain fields of space flight," he said.
Due to low salaries, most of the specialists of the Russian space industry are over 60 or under 30, which seriously jeopardizes the future of the sector.
"We've only kept the program piloted spacecraft, communication satellites and GLONASS navigation system," said Lisov, who believes that precious heritage of the Soviet school, "largely has been lost."
Looking ahead, he believes that Russia, the first power to send a man into space (Yuri Gagarin, 1961), will be able to maintain parity with China, but must give up the desire to compete on an equal footing with the U.S.. EFE
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