Russian Official Implies Foul Play In Mars Probe Failure 451
Back in November, Russia launched the Phobos-Grunt probe on a mission to return a soil sample from Mars' largest moon. Sadly, the probe malfunctioned, and never left orbit. It's due to crash into the Indian Ocean this weekend. An anonymous reader points out some interesting comments from a Russian official, Vladimir Popovkin, who obliquely suggested that interference from other countries was a possible cause of the failure. Quoting:
"Mr. Popovkin’s remarks to the newspaper Izvestia were the first high-level suggestion of nefarious interference. A retired commander of Russia’s missile warning system had speculated in November that strong radar signals from installations in Alaska might have damaged the spacecraft. 'We don’t want to accuse anybody, but there are very powerful devices that can influence spacecraft now,' Mr. Popovkin said in the interview. 'The possibility they were used cannot be ruled out.' ... Mr. Popovkin did not directly implicate the United States in the interview. But he said 'the frequent failure of our space launches, which occur at a time when they are flying over the part of Earth not visible from Russia, where we do not see the spacecraft and do not receive telemetric information, are not clear to us,' an apparent reference to the Americas."
Malice? (Score:5, Informative)
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Re:Simple solution...no more Russian taxis to ISS (Score:5, Informative)
The Cold War mentality again (Score:5, Informative)
Regrettably, the russians have gone back to that silly Cold War mentality. Their own propaganda tells them constantly that they are unique, superior to the others, and surrounded by vile enemies that miss no chance to do harm to russia. Recall that when their submarine Kursk exploded and sank, the first instinctive reaction of the regime and its propaganda was to blame a US sub for colliding with, and thus sinking, Kursk.
aaaaaah, historically (Score:4, Informative)
Their own propaganda tells them constantly that they are unique, superior to the others, and surrounded by vile enemies that miss no chance to do harm to russia
that was exactly the case. the moment revolution happened in russia, the leader of the FREE world, great britain, landed with 18 other 'free' countries to suppress the 'rebellion' of the people and reinstate tzar and aristocracy in russia.
when they failed, they withdrew their military forces, and this time started to fund the white russians (Royalists) with arms and gold. to kill their own countrymen. when they were beaten too, they started to set up alliances and surround the country, leading to the cold war. the only intermediate pause was in between 2 world wars, and that was thanks to nazis.
Drag (Score:5, Informative)
Right. Now, how did we manage to get the satellite to point it's solar panels away from the sun?
I thought the theory as to why the spacecraft is in a stable, albeit backwards, orientation was simple: there are enough air molecules in that orbit to apply pressure to the large solar panels, which causes drag and thus rotates the craft so the panels are towards the back. Just like a shuttlecock in badminton.
Re:Simple solution...no more Russian taxis to ISS (Score:4, Informative)
Why is this so crazy? Now, I don't actually believe that HAARP has anything to do with this, but HAARP has 3.6 million watts at its disposal, and can concentrate that to achieve an ERP of 5.1 billion watts. If you concentrate enough RF on an electronic device you can screw it up in an almost infinite number of ways.
Re:Malice? (Score:4, Informative)
Yep, exactly. Going to Mars is really hard, heck even getting to orbit is tough. So many things have to work or else the whole thing fails. This spacecraft failure is most likely one particular item that was not thoroughly tested (my personal speculation). It does remind me of a mention in the book "Korolev" by James Harford where it describes when Soviets launched a satellite that could have been the first to detect Van Allen radiation belts. However the tape recorder onboard failed because engineer responsible said no more ground testing is needed (I may have forgot some of the details, don't have the book handy right now). My impression is some of the spacecraft people wanted to do some more tests or add some backup circuitry but the engineer insisted the tape recorder will work (I guess it records signal data for later transmission back to ground stations). Tape recorder failed or the data was out of calibration. But I'm thinking this was very ambitious as those early years was a steep learning curve for both US and USSR.
If you have not, read the book. It is very detailed, almost have to indulge yourself into "thinking Russian" (i.e. like reading Anna Karenina) since it is a different culture for engineers. http://www.amazon.com/Korolev-Masterminded-Soviet-Drive-America/dp/0471327212 [amazon.com]
Alrighty I see we have "In Soviet Russia" comments, how about a car analogy? This is /. afterall.
Re:Simple solution...no more Russian taxis to ISS (Score:4, Informative)
HAARP is not a directional antenna that can point and "shoot down" a satellite. HAARP is an ionoshphere research program, that's why it only points straight up.
Secondly, if you can screw up a satellite with radar, then the said satellite will be completely fucked during the next major solar flare.
Thirdly, the OP idea is crazy because you can still see the sun and at least point the spacecraft in the right direction to the sun!!.
The bottom line is, there was major spacecraft malfunction. And it is not unique to this satellite. Russians have had malfunctions with Soyuz too, and that is something that is vital to ISS and US has contracted Russians to use Soyuz. Of course you could be for conspiracy theories that US destroyed its own space shuttles like Challenger.
Re:No (Score:2, Informative)
No. There is no possibility that it's our "fault".
The signals from HAARP attempt to duplicate solar activity on a tiny portion of the ionosphere. HAARP signals are massively weaker than the sun. Spacecraft in orbit or on a launch trajectory travel through this section of ionosphere (if they go through it at all) at over 15,000 mph. Exposure duration is vanishingly small, measured in microseconds.
Any satellite designed to go to Mars should be designed to withstand anything the sun can throw at it, and should therefore be immune to anything HAARP can do. If the weak, short duration emissions from HAARP somehow managed to damage the spacecraft then it was poorly designed and the sun would have taken it out anyway.
Re:Simple solution...no more Russian taxis to ISS (Score:4, Informative)
The spacecraft's orbit [wikipedia.org] is too far south to pass over the HAARP site [wikipedia.org].
Re:Simple solution...no more Russian taxis to ISS (Score:5, Informative)
utter bullshit, the research at HAARP is open, scientists come from around the world to conduct experiments there with no security clearance, public tours are given, you can go tour the HAARP facilities.
Re:Malice? (Score:4, Informative)
We too would have the ability to go into orbit conveniently if we had never progressed beyond rockets.
That about sums up your non-argument. Well I too could have grown the cow myself but I preferred to buy the steak at the butcher.
And if you think Russia is ruled by corruption and mafia control as you put it, you have no clue. Russia is ruled by chaos, real money and a government trying to be strong. It's true, you can bribe your way avoiding speeding tickets or into getting business contracts. But good luck bribing any politician that has any say in governing the country or one of it's regions. One of the richest persons on this planet rots not in a prison, but in a penal camp. He didn't even pose any real threat to Putin and the government, it was just to make a point and eating his companies and resources.
And still, carrying persons and stuff up to and down from the ISS without any fatal failure since the US stopped the shuttle. Even though you call them second world.
Re:Simple solution...no more Russian taxis to ISS (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is, tossing blame like this is the first refuge of incompetent government.
Except it's not the government, it's one politician. Surely whatever country you come from has a few politicians that make similarly ridiculous statements for domestic consumption. I know if you live in the US you will be under a constant barrage of such bullshit in the form of political attack ads. Similarly, what we have here is an obscure blow-hard trying to look appealing to Russian nationalists.
How long before the people have a (renewed) hate of the USA?
Any Russian who swallows this guy's story was already anti-US, just like the 'birthers' were anti-Obama long before they started denying his citizenship, or like 'truthers' were anti-Bush long before they started banging on about 'building 7'. In other words what we are looking at is common garden variety propaganda aimed directly at 'useful idiots', and Russia certainly doesn't have a monopoly on propaganda or idiots. None of this means I condone politicians spreading lies and half truths about anything, anywhere, but it's an unfortunate fact of life that propaganda has, and always will be, a primary tool of politics.
Now IF this was Putin making official speeches with this sort of crap in it, THEN your scenario might have legs. As it stands the GP's "post vodka blame game" is where I'd put my money.