Phobos-Grunt |
Phobos-Grunt |
Jan 22 2005, 02:15 PM
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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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Jul 18 2007, 06:04 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 169 Joined: 17-March 06 Member No.: 709 |
Just a note concerning the English spelling and pronounciation of this mission.
If you examine the Russian name for this mission, then you will note that the Russian letter "y" should be pronounced "oo" as in the English word "moon." Therefore, how about UMSF starting a trend and changing the title of this thread to "Phobos-Groont?" This would more accurately reflect the Russian pronounciation of the word (which means "soil" or "ground"). Also, and to me the most important aspect, this would possibly avert jokes about the "grunt" portion of the mis-translated name. "Groont" may sound a little unusual, but it doesn't sound disgusting, as "grunt" does. Another Phil |
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Jul 18 2007, 07:57 PM
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#3
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Interplanetary Dumpster Diver Group: Admin Posts: 4404 Joined: 17-February 04 From: Powell, TN Member No.: 33 |
In other words, it is a long U sound. The standard transliteration of Фобос-Грунт is Fobos-Grunt. We tend to manipulate to Phobos-Grunt to make Phobos recognizable (Russian has no parallel ph blend for an "f" sound), so if we were to make any change, it might be to be consistent, and, since we fully translate Phobos, we could call it Phobos-Soil. By this pattern, Vega would become Veha (it is an acronym of Venus-Halley, the mission's two targets, but because Russian has no equivalent of an H, their word for Halley is instead "Gallei." Venera would become Venus, Mars would be, well, Mars, Zond would become Probe, and Luna would become Moon (although since Luna refers to the moon in English as well, it could be left Luna without breaking this scheme). The reason that Russian names are often transliterated instead of translated is because the Russians have a naming scheme that can be very confusing (in other words, does one mean the probe or the planet). Although Mars isn't different, making it moot for it, for other names, we have avoided this confusion with things like calling the Venus series "Venera." Phobos-Soil would lead to the question of whether one was talking about the soil (technically regolith, but such a word would be problematic in popular publications since most of the public doesn't know thatword) on Phobos or the spacecraft. So, honoring the long standing tradition, we go with Phobos-Grunt, although we do restore the "ph" since it isn't phonetically different from "f." As far as switching to oo, I think it would be rather assinine for UMSF to defy the accepted principles of transliteration and what is used in all English publications regarding the mission for the improvement of the look and sound gained by changing "Phobos-Grunt" to "Phobos-Groont" (which doesn't look any better to me)).
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