Phobos-Grunt |
Phobos-Grunt |
Jan 22 2005, 02:15 PM
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#1
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Interplanetary Dumpster Diver Group: Admin Posts: 4404 Joined: 17-February 04 From: Powell, TN Member No.: 33 |
In Astronomy's February issue, they report that Russia has approved funding for the Phobos-Grunt mission. Design work has gone on since 1997, and the new design is scaled down to fly an a Soyuz rocket instead of the larger Proton. The main purpose is similar to Phobos-2, with the addition of a sample return. Also being discussed is the possibility of it carrying a few "meteorological stations" fof Mars itself. Generally, I have written this mission off as "never going to happen," but with the new Russian alliance with ESA, I wonder if they might be able to actually fly this thing. Also, with Putin's increasingly Soviet-style leadership, and with the likelyhood of lunar missions from China and India, Russian pride might drive this mission. If so, I have a concern. This mission sounds really, really ambitious. And the Russians have never even sent a fully successful Mars orbiter, and that is when they launched them in pairs or triplets. Still, if the mission flies, even if it doesn't bring back Phobos soil it might obtain some interesting results. Here is ESA's Phobos-Grunt page:
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/ESA_Permanent_...IJFW4QWD_0.html Also, ESA has another page on potential Russian programs, although this seem to be nothing but pipe dreams at the moment. Would be a cool mission though. http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/ESA_Permanent_...0LFW4QWD_0.html And also a page on the only partially realized current Russian project, its program to put instruments on other's spacecraft, such as HEND on Odyssey. http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/ESA_Permanent_...HMFW4QWD_0.html -------------------- |
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Nov 9 2011, 05:49 AM
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14433 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
There maybe something unique that constrains the ejection burn from LEO to Mars once they're in LEO. Their window may have been a couple of weeks to launch, but once launched, the orbital parameters of that launch may constrain the ejection to a few days.
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Nov 9 2011, 08:44 AM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3648 Joined: 1-October 05 From: Croatia Member No.: 523 |
There maybe something unique that constrains the ejection burn from LEO to Mars once they're in LEO. Their window may have been a couple of weeks to launch, but once launched, the orbital parameters of that launch may constrain the ejection to a few days. It was brought up that nodal regression of the parking orbit might be a big issue. The inclination of the orbit stays the same, but the plane in which it lies rotates around Earth's axis slowly due to Earth's oblateness. More propellant to waste correcting for this out-of-plane injection the bigger the delay is. -------------------- |
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