That's all it takes to do anything nowadays.

Phil

Good info, Emily. Thanks.

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.

This was the best thing I could find on what Yinghuo might mean, but I wasn't at all sure of the context on this site:
http://www.chinapage.com/astronomy/syho/syho.html

--Emily

Interesting site. Yinghuo appears to be the name of the "Heaven" which "contains Mars" in an ancient Chinese astronomy text. It does not refer to the common name of the planet itself.

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/20...icle_316758.htm

The characters are 萤火一号.

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
Click to view attachment

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

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...

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

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)).

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

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).

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...

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

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.

So Grunt roughly translates to "regolith"?

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.

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.

Regarding the idea of deep dust on Phobos, I dont think we need worry too much. Prior to any lunar landings, the same was said about the Moon, yet Luna 9 dispelled that idea. Similarly, touchdowns by NEAR at Eros and by Hayabusa MUSES-C at Itokawa have demonstrated that asteroids have solid surfaces.

Sinking into dust will not be a problem.

There don't seem to be any publicly available figures for the likely mass of the lander, but let's be generous and call it 1000kg. The recent mockup suggests three splayed landing pads of around 40cm diameter.

The surface gravity of Phobos peaks at 0.0084 m/s^2.

Taken together that's a Phobos ground pressure of around 22N/m^2 (say 0.003 psi, in old units). About a thousandth of a human's ground pressure standing on the Earth.

Andy

I wonder if anyone has come across this Phobos-Grunt video on YouTube:

Phobos-Grunt YouTube Video

It gives a detailed timeline of events in Russian as well as details on how the orbit insertion and extraction of samples are going to be peformed.

wait... is it going to land on Earth like Genesis - no parachutes, just crash landing?

The technique of Earth landing the Martian sample is the simplest of all. The capsule must have a stronger material than the Genesis ones.

The difference is that Genesis wasn't designed to land the way it did. However, I can imagine that some people will be very afraid of the possibility that the container breaks and the Martian bugs get out and kill all of us

This frightens me, I don't know why. It's a relativly untested method that has'nt seemed to work very well in the past.

Yeah...lithobraking augmented by a bit of atmospheric deceleration! I'm very surprised that there isn't at least a drogue (maybe a ribbon chute?) for vertical stabilization during the terminal landing phase; that reentry vehicle looks less than aerodynamically stable, unless it's really bottom-heavy.

No chute is the simplest possible design. You build it like a tank, and then you don't have to depend on any chute, drogue, mortar, circuitry, deployment, accelerometres, software etc etc etc.

I'm all for it.

Doug

Wasn't there the idea to one day convert the Mars Moons into a kind of space-station, something similar to the idea of Asteroid mining. Living inside on of these asteroids would provide astronauts with radiation shielding and the iron/carbonaceous materials could be extracted for building other items. In the far future it could possibly be converted into a station for fueling other spacecraft.

Spoken just like a man who, let's say, is trying to design an EDL system for a balloon payload...

Chen Changya of the Shanghai Institute of Satellite Engineering recently gave an update on the progress of Yinguo 1 at a forum on aerospace technology.



China Daily



China.org.cn

Good news everyone!
Presentations from recent IKI international forum are now available: Forum Materials.
Presentations feature Phobos-Grunt science program, METNET mission plans, latest SPICAV/SOIR/VIRTIS results, Venus exploration perspectives from ESA/ROSCOSMOS, some Rosetta and mars rovers related stuff plus a bit of planetology.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/phobos_grunt_preflight.html - an article by Anatoly Zak:

1. Phobos-Grunt too big to launch with Soyuz-2, the launcher probably will be a Zenit rocket.

2. The project remains on track for launch in 2009

Finnish Mars Lander??!!

EDIT: Ah, the MetNet demonstrator - forgot about that

They're referring to MetNet, actually.

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=3896 - here's a thread I wrote about it.

Good, maybe they thought better of sticking MetNet on a Volna.

Looks like they really want to send a Mars lander. This makes the 2009 Mars missions worrisome - all Mars landings will include yet untested technologies.

As for MetNet, it seems they will enter the amosphere in a ballistic trajectory. After that... I don't know. These landers even don't have parachutes.

They did drop tests this spring and it went flawlessly. That is probably why they wanted to go ahead and send it. Of course, this little lander/penetrator is only a test for the MetNet mission, so it, in a sense, is the proving mission.

In my opinion drop tests are not of much value. For example, the parachute and the airbags of Beagle 2 were successfully tested (though it's a controversial subject). The systems of Deep Space 2 were also tested very successfully (I have watched a whole documentary about the tests of these penetrators). But Mars is different than the Earth. We have a thinner atmosphere, fluctuations may fool the onboard computer...

Well, like you said earlier, MetNet doesn't have a parachute, and it doesn't have much else to do on the way down, so a computer problem is less likely. The main purpose of the drop tests is to make sure it still worked after a hard hit. Mars does have a thinner atmosphere and different conditions, which is the whole reason for the precursor mission - send one and see if it works under real conditions before they send a whole network of MetNet landers. In a sense, this precursor is an in situ test, but one that might yield a little science if it works. I do wish they had gone with the original plan to send two or three landers. I would hate to think that they had a perfectly good lander that was unlucky and hit a sharp rock (the Russians should know not to test their Mars luck, because they don't have any).

the Russians should know not to test their Mars luck, because they don't have any.
This is the best I read in your post

To be honest, I'm worried because I see they still work somehow in... a Soviet manner (can't find a better word) - I mean - they insist to launch the mission in 2009 at any cost, for example. Well, sometimes it's good, because I hate delays. However, if Mars' 73 had been delayed to 1975, they would have been the first on the planet.
Hope you understood me.

You know, NASA and the Russians have the opposite problem. NASA will often scrimp on instruments, sending probes without many instruments (DAWN with no magnetometer, the MERs). The good side is that such spacecraft are reliable, the bad side is that there are measurements that scientists really wanted that they can't take. The Russians, on the other hand, seem to try to strap every last thing they can to the mission. I wish they would just launch an orbiter (maybe the much-needed SAR orbiter that never seems to make the cut) with maybe a penetrator or two. But having sent 10 Mars missions (I know there were more, but I am ignoring launch failures, since those failures have nothing to do with the complexity of the actual spacecraft) and not having one full success, one would think that they wouldn't try to jump straight in with an orbiter-drop-off Chinese orbiter-lander-Phobos landing and ascent-Phobos sample-return mission (Of the often-cited "successes," The Mars-2 orbiter was in the right orbit but couldn't sent telemetry, Mars-3 could send limited telemetry (not for long enough to send pictures at resolution better than 250-line mode) and was in an orbit that only took it near the planet every 18 days, Mars-5 failed after only 9 days with many of its science goals unfinished and with 75 percent of its film unexposed).

Of course, it has been in the pipeline for a while, and since it is the only mission (along with MetNet) that has enjoyed any serious backing until very recently, it is understandable that there are a lot of goals for it. Incidentally, a lot of the hardware is leftover from Phobos '89, so at its core, this may be the last Soviet mission.

But if we look at the subject with optimism, we have an example how a complex mission may be near to success. For example, Hayabusa - it landed twice, took off, there were engine problems + MINERVA failed to achieve a soft landing. Phobos-Grunt may be more successful than Phobos 2 (which indeed sent some data, including images).

I think reffering to it as "working in a Soviet manner" is a good way to put it.

It often seemed that the US would achieve something in their space program that the Russians had not done, then the Russian responce was to point at something else. So, the Russians fail to make any manned lunar flights, declare that orbital stations (aka Salyut) are the true destiny of manned spaceflight, and in the meantime "did we mention our vigorous unmmanned mars exploration efforts? Heck, you Americans are only sending an orbiter (Mariner 8,9) but we are sending orbiters AND landers (Mars 2,3). " So, not only point in a different direction, but stack multiple firsts into a single mission.

They would also load down a mission with lots of elements, to try to make up for a previous failure. So the Phobos missions were a failure, but the next mission includes multiple elements designed to impress everyone with the scope of the mission, and Mars 96 is born.


Phobos Grunt seems to be carrying on that tradition very well. No unmanned Mars shots in 13 years, and the last even partially sucessful mission was 20 years ago. That partially sucessful mission was merely to rendesvous and drop a payload onto Phobos. Well, well, we are going to do better than that on this second try, and return a sample to Earth. Oh, and take along a Chinese satellite. Oh, hey, and take along a Mars lander. ..... We thought about taking a tourist, but decided to leave that for the next mission.

Another thing that makes me optimistic is that the weakest link in the Soviet program was a result of bad computers, something that will likely no longer be an issue.

I've always wondered, how can a single Soyuz launch a Phobos sample return lander, a Mars orbiter and possibly a penetrator. Well, it seems it can't.

I liked to see they chose Zenith, because in my opinion Proton is very unreliable.

I think Ted has hit the nail on the head here. Computer hardware failure (and software upload control protocols) had doomed every Soviet Mars probe since the Mars 4/5/6/7 flotilla (and maybe caused the Mars 3 orbiter to drop the datalink from its lander thus lose the 1st pics from the Martian surface...)

Lets hope that this time around some bright-spark of an electronics factory manager doesnt have a brilliant cost-cutting idea like using aluminium instead of gold in IC fabrication... (shakes head, sobs quietly)

http://www.geocities.com/launchreport/reliability2008.txt

If you take all Zenit variations and all Proton variations - the Zenit comes out at 81.5% success rate, the Proton 92.3%

In the last 12 months, Zenit has 4 launches with one failure, Proton 3 launches with one failure.
http://www.geocities.com/launchreport/stats2008.txt

The Proton is not unreliable, especially when compared to Zenit.

Doug