A heartbreaking, out-of-the-gate failure of Russia’s sample return mission early this year created a wide circle of disappointment. For Russia, it was supposed to be a "cavalry charge" toward a hyperambitious goal that would have redeemed a quarter-century of interplanetary impotence but instead became a cosmic humiliation when the craft died shortly after liftoff. For planetary science, it meant that the composition of the Martian moon Phobos remains speculative and its origins still undetermined. For future human space strategies, the possibility of obtaining valuable supplies of oxygen en route to Mars, as the Phobos-Grunt mission was intended to determine, remains uncertain.

Within weeks of the probe's fiery burnup on January 15 over the far southeastern Pacific (where despite official Moscow assurances, it probably dropped some unobserved fragments onto dry land in Chile and Argentina), Roscomos, the Russian space agency, posted a summary of the accident investigation results on its Web site.

The report, posted in Russian  earlier this year, raised more questions than it answered. And those issues may have an impact on plans for future Russian participation in European and U.S. planetary missions.

Even though top Russian officials previously offered well-publicized speculations about interference from American radar, that hypothesis was rejected. Instead the investigation suggested that cosmic rays had knocked out two non-radiation-hardened microchips at exactly the wrong moment. This event led the probe's computer to default to "safe mode" and await remedial commands from Earth. Although American experts in radiation hardening found the conclusion unlikely, they admitted it was not impossible.

Now that finding is in serious doubt because it is so statistically unlikely and because reports of more likely fatal flaws have appeared.

Before the report’s release (and, in fact, in some cases prior to the Phobos-Grunt launch), experts quoted anonymously in the Russian press were alleging that the flight software for the probe was badly designed and implemented and that last-minute modifications to the probe were numerous and not well controlled. But the official report discounted any such suspicions about the software or the hardware.

It did obliquely admit that two fundamental design flaws were ultimately responsible for the probe's inability to tolerate the cosmic-ray environment. First, most of the overwhelmingly foreign-built microchips—more than 90,000 in all—were never screened for radiation hardness and were purchased in full knowledge that they were not "space qualified." Second, the vehicle was designed so that emergency radio commands from Earth (the kind of signals required to coax it out of safe mode) were practically impossible to get onboard until after it had left its low parking orbit and headed out toward Mars. At that point, it would become much easier to track for long periods.

According to the report’s timeline, because of the initial failure to ignite the engines to head for Mars, the probe remained in its low parking orbit under full autopilot control. Sun-pointing orientation was maintained through thruster firings. Yet because ground sites could not accurately point their signals at the rapidly moving and only briefly visible probe, it took almost two weeks before any two-way communication could be established.

During that period, ground tracking revealed a bizarre behavior pattern. The low elliptical orbit actually began rising, mainly at its perigee (low point). The rise was steady until, after 10 days, it abruptly stopped and began a natural decay. These unexpected changes made precise predictions of its future flight path more complicated, perhaps contributing to the inability of ground sites to point their signals with sufficient accuracy.

7 Comments

1. 1. BaldEgalitarian 09:18 AM 3/26/12

   I wonder if we would already have colonies on Mars and beyond if humans would have been humbly cooperating with one another instead of pridefully competing with one another from our beginning?

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2. 2. Mark5146546 10:27 AM 3/26/12

   I wonder if the space race would have occurred al all were it not for Soviet love of sci-fi and Yankee varsity “not being beat” spirit.
   
   It was the US running after the Soviet space program that started what may one day evolve into space colonization – not a logical economic development.
   
   I am glad we are not always logical.
   

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3. 3. Mark5146546 10:29 AM 3/26/12

   In the above post the ?s are supposed to be hyphens.

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4. 4. BaldEgalitarian 11:56 AM 3/27/12

   I hope colonies would exist for curiosities sake, not economic development.

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5. 5. SigmaEyes 01:19 PM 3/27/12

   I seem to remember that the Russian space agency and Russian government did not hold up their end during the early construction of the International Space Station. The US stepped in to pick up "the bulk" of the failed Russian load both in terms of cost and lift by the US Shuttle program. The result was what the author, Mr. Oberg, called a "quarter-century of interplanetary impotence."
   
   If Russian involvement in future interplanetary cooperation is expected to increase, I hope agreements will provide for adequate contingency planning and financing.
   
   I am beginning to see valid reasoning for privatization of near space flight coupled with international cooperation in long distance probes, exploration, and missions. But I think sooner or later we will have to begin cleaning up some of the orbiting junk debris that threaten and jeopardize both satellites and launch operations. That task needs to be an international effort of cooperation, too.

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6. 6. Grumpyoleman 09:47 AM 3/30/12

   Probably the Russians have inadequate software configuration control issues which causes bad code and stray bits of obsolete code to reenter the program scripts from time to time, the olde one step forward and two back. I worked for a company that had to learn this over a 10-year period, but was still having issues when I left in 2000. I say this because the Russians apparent lack of success with program depending on highly accurate operational SW.

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7. 7. scottlmoore111 06:57 PM 3/30/12

   The Russian ministry of propaganda still exists.

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