Phobos-Grunt Options

[Liss]

I am not sure of the characters for "Yinghuo", but Mars in Chinese is literally "Fire Star" which is pronounced "huoxing" in the common dialect.

The characters are 萤火一号.

[Paolo]

This is a recent image of Fobos Grunt complete with the Chinese subsat scanned from a Lavochkin Association Le Bourget 2007 brochure.
I am a bit surprised by it. I wonder what happens to the sample return capsule if the subsat fails to release.
Paolo

[louisfriedman]

This is a recent image of Fobos Grunt complete with the Chinese subsat scanned from a Lavochkin Association Le Bourget 2007 brochure.
I am a bit surprised by it. I wonder what happens to the sample return capsule if the subsat fails to release.
Paolo

Thanks for the nice image. We are working on a novel experiment to be carried along in the return capsule: http://planetary.org/programs/projects/life/
We don't know much about this Chinese orbiter or its interface; but we will try to find out more.

Louis Friedman

[nprev]

Looks interesting, Mr. Friedman.

Any chance of an accompanying chip with TPS member names as well? Be neat to have one of those return on the first ever Earth-Mars (vicinity thereof, anyhow) round trip...nice thing to have in a display case in the Pasadena HQ lobby...

[PhilHorzempa]

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

[tedstryk]

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)).

[elakdawalla]

I was going to write my own reply, but you did a better job than I would have, Ted.

I'll just add that it's fun to say "Phobos-Grunt" and "Luna-Glob," however you pronounce each one.

--Emily

[David]

As "Grunt" is a borrowing from the German "Grund" (meaning ground or basis), an English transliteration "Phobos-Grund" would have been justifiable.

Luna has different connotations in Russian from English; in Russian being just the word for "Moon", while the English usage is by turns fanciful, pretentious, or science-fictional, usually referring to the Latin and not the Russian word (whose similar pronunciations are coincidental, the product of parallel linguistic evolution).

[tedstryk]

As "Grunt" is a borrowing from the German "Grund" (meaning ground or basis), an English transliteration "Phobos-Grund" would have been justifiable.

Luna has different connotations in Russian from English; in Russian being just the word for "Moon", while the English usage is by turns fanciful, pretentious, or science-fictional, usually referring to the Latin and not the Russian word (whose similar pronunciations are coincidental, the product of parallel linguistic evolution).

That is true about Luna, although there are those who would like to make it a proper name for the moon (with Terra being the earth). That is why I said it would be possible, although I would add that you are right that "moon" would be more consistent if it were fully translated.

The problem with "Grund" is that the equivalent ground word in meaning in Russian is "Земля" ("Zemlya"). "Grunt" ("Грунт"), while indeed a derivative of "grund" (as is the English "ground," for that matter), has shifted in meaning in Russian to very specifically mean "soil." While there is a degree of interchangeability between the two (just as you could say that you buried the treasure in the soil or the ground), the mission is to fetch soil, and to use "grund" here would be the equivalent of going to the garden store and requesting a bag of potting ground or top ground instead of potting soil or topsoil. They might figure out what you mean, but it would certainly be awkward usage. So, while it is indeed a German root, the meaning has shifted enough that replacing the Russian word with its German root would be very problematic (not to mention that the Russians would likely find this insulting).

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

Here, in Bulgaria, Grunt ( Грунт ) is used ONLY for soil on the Moon, but NEVER for ordinary soil on Earth... We also say Martian SOIL, but rarely Martian Grunt...

[Paolo]

A detailed model of Fobos-Grunt on show at the MAKS 2007 airshow in Moscow
http://www.federalspace.ru/NewsDoSele.asp?NEWSID=2394

[IM4]

And some more FG-related stuff from MAKS 2007 airshow!
1)

FG global view, Return spacecraft with cameras (?) and top view of Return spacecraft and Descent Module
2)

Yinhuo poster from China Aerospace. The latest version of the FG/Yinhuo spacecrafts atop of propulsion module as extracted from another poster.
3)
Booklet from NPO Lavochkin (PDF, 6 Mb), scanned to jpg's. Russian+English, a kind of summary for Fobos Grunt mission.

[volcanopele]

Here, in Bulgaria, Grunt ( Грунт ) is used ONLY for soil on the Moon, but NEVER for ordinary soil on Earth... We also say Martian SOIL, but rarely Martian Grunt...

So Grunt roughly translates to "regolith"?

[nprev]

I'm thinking "grunt" may well best translate to "ground"; the two words are homophonic, and seem to refer to something more conceptually substantial than just soil.

[monitorlizard]

It looks like the topic of the Phobos surface dust layer hasn't been discussed here in great detail, and it seems to me to be a serious problem for Phobos-Grunt. The best reference I have is pretty old, Sept. 1998(antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980914.html). It states "recent photographs of Phobos have indicated that a layer of fine powder estimated to be a meter deep covers the whole surface." That refers to MOC images and I think TES measurements made at that time.

The photos I've seen of Phobos-Grunt models don't show any special features to overcome this problem, such as very high/long legs to stand above the dust. I suppose the spacecraft could do something like fire its descent engines for a prolonged period to blow away dust at its landing site, but I can't imagine enough fuel would be aboard for a technique like that.

Maybe I'm missing something. Perhaps the above quote is too simplistic, and the dust layer is much thinner on some parts of Phobos. Or maybe the meter-thick dust estimate has been modified or refuted since 1998. If not, I don't see how Phobos-Grunt could land successfully.