Phobos-Grunt Options

[tedstryk]

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

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

An interesting tidbit from Tony Reichhardt's News article in the December 15, 2005, issue of Nature:

"Russia's long-suffering space scientists had reason to celebrate last week as a generous funding increase was approved for the national space agency, giving hope to missions that have long been on hold.

[...]

"One such mission, called Phobos-Grunt, now seems to be on track to launch in 2009. It will head for the martian moon Phobos, where it will land and collect a soil sample before returning to Earth. The mission has been scaled down — it will use conventional propulsion and launch on a Soyuz rocket, instead of the more expensive Proton — but it should still manage to land 45 kilograms of scientific instrumentation on Phobos.

"Spacecraft engineers at the Moscow-based Lavochkin Association are laying plans for an ambitious mission called Luna-Glob, which would deliver an orbiter and a network of instruments to the Moon for geophysical studies. This mission would probably get funding only after Phobos-Grunt is well under way, says [Mikhail] Marov [of the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics in Moscow]."

References:

Budget boost gets Russia back in the space game
Tony Reichhardt
Nature 438, 896 (2005)
doi:10.1038/438896b
Full Text

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At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, I'll only say that I'll believe in this mission when I see it. I was at an International Astronautical Congress in Toulouse, France, a few years back when a presentation for this mission was given by individuals from the Moscow Aviation Insititute and the Lavochkin Association. None of the others present who heard the presentation believed it would ever happen, at least not without involvement from the U.S. or Europe. In fact, a few "western space professionals" laughed outright, and one said "they're [the Russians] just looking for outside support."

Having said that, I hope it does come off, given that the Aladdin concept never made the downselect in a couple of Discovery solicitations, and especially if Gulliver never gets selected as a future Discovery mission. Indeed, I think both Phobos and Deimos get short changed in the U.S. and European Mars exploration architectures.

This post has been edited by AlexBlackwell: Dec 14 2005, 07:38 PM

[Toma B]

.......At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, I'll only say that I'll believe in this mission when I see it.......

So it will be a scaled down version of "Phobos"...


I can still remember high expectations of that spacecraft...Mars orbiter, Phobos landing etc...
In the end; Phobos-1 was lost before it even reached Mars and Phobos-2 took "staggering amount of information including 38 images"...same basic design was again used on Mars-96 but it never had a chance to see Mars....
Russia (CCCP) has yet to score first successful mission to Mars...
As said above I'll believe it when I see it...
Wish them good luck anyway.

[ljk4-1]

So it will be a scaled down version of "Phobos"...


I can still remember high expectations of that spacecraft...Mars orbiter, Phobos landing etc...
In the end; Phobos-1 was lost before it even reached Mars and Phobos-2 took "staggering amount of information including 38 images"...same basic design was again used on Mars-96 but it never had a chance to see Mars....   
Russia (CCCP) has yet to score first successful mission to Mars...
As said above I'll believe it when I see it...
Wish them good luck anyway.

While the Soviets never had a fully successful mission to Mars, they did have partial successes, and they did land the first spacecraft on the planet, even if they did all go bye-bye prematurely. Of course none of them returned nearly as much data and images as the US missions.

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

While the Soviets never had a fully successful mission to Mars, they did have partial successes, and they did land the first spacecraft on the planet, even if they did all go bye-bye prematurely.  Of course none of them returned nearly as much data and images as the US missions.

To put it mildly, I think that's an understatement. I certainly do not want to engage in bashing the Russians -- they have some fairly top notch scientists -- but their data return via spacecraft from Mars has been much worse than "[not] nearly as much...as the US missions." I would venture a guess, without having done a bit by bit comparison, that Mars Express alone has returned more data than all Soviet/Russian Mars missions combined.

[ljk4-1]

To put it mildly, I think that's an understatement.  I certainly do not want to engage in bashing the Russians -- they have some fairly top notch scientists -- but their data return via spacecraft from Mars has been much worse than "[not] nearly as much...as the US missions."  I would venture a guess, without having done a bit by bit comparison, that Mars Express alone has returned more data than all Soviet/Russian Mars missions combined.

I may be wrong on this, but I remember reading that Soviet space philosophy when it came to robot deep space probes was to build them as best they could, but essentially "test" them in space. If they failed on the way, one simply pretended to the West that they never existed, learn from the mistakes if possible, and try to build a better one next time. The US view was build and test them to the max before sending them out.

This is one reason why the USSR had more launches and more failures than the US.

[JonClarke]

I may be wrong on this, but I remember reading that Soviet space philosophy when it came to robot deep space probes was to build them as best they could, but essentially "test" them in space.  If they failed on the way, one simply pretended to the West that they never existed, learn from the mistakes if possible, and try to build a better one next time.  The US view was build and test them to the max before sending them out.

This is one reason why the USSR had more launches and more failures than the US.

Don't know about the space environment test program but Moon, Mars and Venus landers were extensively tested on earth in extensive ground, drop and simulation chamber tests. It seems to have paid off with the venus landers but to with mars. Don't know why.

And yes Alex, you are a curmudgeon. I think they will pull it off. They are getting serious budget increases at last. And I don't think comparing Phobos 2 to ME is fair given that the design of ME 15 years more advanced - better compared with mariner 9 which returned lower quality and less diverse data but at lot more of it. If you are not excited by an annoucement that this mission is on track for 4 years i assume you are equaly unexcited by ML, which is also supposed to be on track for a launch 4 years from now.

Toma B: - you will find that Phobos 2 collected a lot more data than 38 pictures. There are at least 300 publications I can identify on this mission. As a sample return mission, there is no way that it can be considered a scaled down Phobos 2, given that that was did not involve sample return.

Ted: while the amount was erroneous, the interpretation of the Mars 6 lander MS data did rightly alert people to the possibility that Mars has above terrestrial proportions of Ar.

That said, the mission does scare me at bit. Hayabusa has shown how difficult small body sample return can be. I would like to see the Russians get a few more runs on the Mars board with some simple missions before trying something this ambitious. A criticism of their prevous Mars missions would be that (unlike with their lunar and venus probes) they did not iron out bugs with repeat missions but sent a succession of every more complex probes.


Jon

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

And yes Alex, you are a curmudgeon.  I think they will pull it off.  They are getting serious budget increases at last.

I sure hope you're right, Jon. Me, I've seen too many Russian "sales pitches" to be excited at this early juncture. Indeed, I've seen too many NASA "virtual slide show" missions that never left the PowerPoint file, too, and NASA has a much better track record over the past 10-15 years than the Russians!

And I don't think comparing Phobos 2 to ME is fair given that the design of ME 15 years more advanced - better compared with mariner 9 which returned lower quality and less diverse data but at lot more of it.  If you are not excited by an annoucement that this mission is on track for 4 years i assume you are equaly unexcited by ML, which is also supposed to be on track for a launch 4 years from now.

Now who's making the unfair comparisons, Jon?

At least MSL (I presume that's the mission you're referring to by "ML") has solicited and selected instruments. I'll concede, however, that that's no guarantee MSL will fly.