Phobos Grunt Letter

breit_ideas@poyntsource.com

> To the participants of the Phobos-Soil Project To the participants of 
> the Phobos-Soil spacecraft tracking
> 
> December 8, 2011
> 
> Dear Colleagues,
> 
> As you may already know, the launch of the Phobos-Soil spacecraft was 
> a failure. On November 8, 2011 the spacecraft was put into the near 
> Earth orbit, however, the booster did not turn on, and, therefore, the 
> spacecraft did not manage to change this initial orbit and transfer to 
> the interplanetary trajectory. The reason of this failure has not been 
> determined yet.
> 
> Immediately after this unpredictable event all forces of the mission 
> control team were concentrated in order to attempt to establish 
> communication with the spacecraft. Several foreign organizations, in 
> particular, ESOC-ESA, DSN-JPL-NASA, NORAD-STRATCOM, numerous amateur 
> observers tracked the spacecraft to establish communication with it 
> and determine parameters of the orbit, its orientation and attitude.
> However, despite people being at work 24 / 7 since the launch, all 
> these attempts have not yield any satisfactory results. We are 
> grateful to our foreign colleagues, who provided us with every list of 
> information about the spacecraft which was crucial at the time.
> 
> Currently, the spacecraft is rotating at the near Earth orbit, 
> lowering every day, and we expect that it is to entry the atmosphere 
> in several weeks. Lavochkin Association specialists will continue 
> their attempts to establish connection with the spacecraft and send 
> commands until the very end of its existence. We are working 
> nevertheless on the issue of re-entry and probability of where and 
> which fragments may hit the ground (if any). There is a sensitive 
> matter that one of the scientific instruments (Messbauer spectrometer) 
> contains radioactive material Co-57. However, the amount of Co-57 is 
> about few (less than 10) micrograms, so that, according to our 
> evaluations, no significant problems are is anticipated.
> 
> At present, the next steps of the Russian space science program on the 
> Solar system exploration are being discussed. In accordance with the 
> current plans, the next missions are Luna-Glob and Luna-Resource. As 
> another possible additional step, at the moment ROSCOSMOS, ESA and 
> NASA are discussing the collaboration on the ExoMars and Russian 
> Mars-NET missions. Moreover, the Russian Academy of Sciences would 
> like to prepare a new mission to Phobos. However, no decision has not 
> been taken yet.
> 
> We would like to express our deep gratitude to You and all the 
> scientists and specialists for collaboration on the Phobos-Soil 
> Mission, preparation of scientific instruments and provision of ground 
> support. We are deeply sorry about the failure of the Phobos-Soil 
> Mission. We hope in future to continue our collaboration on space 
> science projects.
> 
> Academician Lev Zelenyi
> Director, Space Research Institute
> Chair, Solar system exploration Board
> The Russian Academy of Sciences
> 
> 
> P.S. Please, convey this letter to members of your team. Thank you.
> 
>

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