Australian scientists who modeled conditions on Mars to examine how much of the Red Planet was habitable said that “large regions” could sustain life.Charley Lineweaver’s team, from the Australian National University, compared models of temperature and pressure conditions on Earth with those on Mars to estimate how much of the distant planet was livable for Earth-like organisms. While just one percent of Earth’s volume — from core to upper atmosphere — was occupied by life, Lineweaver said their world-first modeling showed three percent of Mars was habitable, though most of it was underground.

“What we tried to do, simply, was take almost all of the information we could and put it together and say ‘is the big picture consistent with there being life on Mars?’,” the astrobiologist told AFP on Monday.”And the simple answer is yes… There are large regions of Mars that are compatible with terrestrial life.” Where previous studies had taken a “piecemeal” approach by examining particular sites on Mars for signs of life, Lineweaver said his research was a “comprehensive compilation” of the entire planet using decades of data.Frozen water has been found at the poles on Mars and the ANU study examined how much of the planet could sustain water “that could be habitable by Earth-like standards by Earth-like microbes”.

The low-pressure environment of Mars means water cannot exist as a liquid and will vaporize on the surface, but Lineweaver said the conditions are right underground, where the weight of the soil gives the added pressure required. It would also be warm enough, at certain depths, for bacteria and other micro-organisms to thrive due to heat from the planet’s core.

The average surface temperature on Mars, Earth’s nearest neighbor, is minus 63 degrees Celsius (minus 81 Fahrenheit). Lineweaver said his study was “the best estimate yet published of how habitable Mars is to terrestrial microbes” and a significant finding given mankind had evolved from microbial life.

“It’s not important if you want to figure out what the laws of physics are and you want to talk to some intelligent aliens who could build spaceships,” he said. ”If you’re interested in the origin of life and how likely life is to get started on other planets, that’s what relevant here.” NASA’s Curiosity Rover, the largest, most sophisticated robotic explorer ever built, is en route to Mars and due to land in August 2012. It has a laser for zapping rocks and a tool kit to analyze their contents as well as a robotic arm, drill, cameras and sensors to enable it to report back on the Martian weather and atmospheric radiation.

Curiosity is scheduled to land at the Gale Crater, near Mars’ equator, chosen for its five kilometer (three mile) high sediment mountain which will hopefully reveal clues about the planet’s wetter past Lineweaver said the NASA mission “sadly” did not have the capability to dig deep enough to find the life his study had modeled but Curiosity would be able to examine “at least the edges” of what was once the Martian depths at the crater. “But these have been exposed for a long time and therefore are probably devoid of volatiles and they are not warm like they used to be,” he said. Lineweaver’s paper was published Monday in the scientific journal Astrobiology.

Russia could become a full partner in a planned U.S.-European Mars exploration project, a European Space Agency (ESA) spokesman has said.

The Space News International website quoted Franco Bonacina as saying on Thursday that senior NASA, ESA and Russian space agency Roscosmos officials have agreed to continue talks on the issue.

The project that ESA calls ExoMars is facing difficulties due to a lack of financing from NASA.

Bonacina said on Thursday that ESA Science Director Alvaro Gimenez Canete hosted Charles J. Gay, NASA Associate Administrator, and deputy Roscosmos head Anatoly Shilov at ESA headquarters on Wednesday.

The meeting “ended with optimism” that Russia could provide a Proton rocket to launch a European-led Mars telecommunications orbiter and a set of European and Russian sensors in 2016 in exchange for full membership in the exploration project.

The ESA spokesman also said the space officials agreed to create two working groups to look into the project feasibility and technical details. They are expected to report their conclusions to the heads of the three space agencies by the start of February.

No documents have been signed yet, he said.

Earlier, a deputy director of Russia’s space research institute, Oleg Korablyov, told RIA Novosti that Russian scientists are interested in joining ExoMars as this will speed up the development of the country’s own program of Mars research, as well as cut its expenditures.

NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has found bright veins of a mineral, apparently gypsum, deposited by water. Analysis of the vein will help improve understanding of the history of wet environments on Mars.

“This tells a slam-dunk story that water flowed through underground fractures in the rock,” said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for Opportunity. “This stuff is a fairly pure chemical deposit that formed in place right where we see it. That can’t be said for other gypsum seen on Mars or for other water-related minerals Opportunity has found. It’s not uncommon on Earth, but on Mars, it’s the kind of thing that makes geologists jump out of their chairs.”

The latest findings by Opportunity were presented Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union’s conference in San Francisco.

The vein examined most closely by Opportunity is about the width of a human thumb (0.4 to 0.8 inch, or 1 to 2 centimeters), 16 to 20 inches (40 to 50 centimeters) long, and protrudes slightly higher than the bedrock on either side of it. Observations by the durable rover reveal this vein and others like it within an apron surrounding a segment of the rim of Endeavour Crater. None like it were seen in the 20 miles (33 kilometers) of crater-pocked plains that Opportunity explored for 90 months before it reached Endeavour, nor in the higher ground of the rim.

Last month, researchers used the Microscopic Imager and Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer on the rover’s arm and multiple filters of the Panoramic Camera on the rover’s mast to examine the vein, which is informally named “Homestake.”  The spectrometer identified plentiful calcium and sulfur, in a ratio pointing to relatively pure calcium sulfate.

Calcium sulfate can exist in many forms, varying by how much water is bound into the minerals’ crystalline structure. The multi-filter data from the camera suggest gypsum, a hydrated calcium sulfate. On Earth, gypsum is used for making drywall and plaster of Paris.
Observations from orbit had detected gypsum on Mars previously. A dune field of windblown gypsum on far northern Mars resembles the glistening gypsum dunes in White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.

“It is a mystery where the gypsum sand on northern Mars comes from,” said Opportunity science-team member Benton Clark of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. “At Homestake, we see the mineral right where it formed. It will be important to see if there are deposits like this in other areas of Mars.”

The Homestake deposit, whether gypsum or another form of calcium sulfate, likely formed from water dissolving calcium out of volcanic rocks. The calcium combined with sulfur that was either leached from the rocks or introduced as volcanic gas, and it was deposited as calcium sulfate into an underground fracture that later became exposed at the surface.

Throughout Opportunity’s long traverse across Mars’ Meridiani plain, the rover has driven over bedrock composed of magnesium, iron and calcium sulfate minerals that also indicate a wet environment billions of years ago. The highly concentrated calcium sulfate at Homestake could have been produced in conditions more neutral than the harshly acidic conditions indicated by the other sulfate deposits observed by Opportunity.

“It could have formed in a different type of water environment, one more hospitable for a larger variety of living organisms,” Clark said.

Homestake and similar-looking veins appear in a zone where the sulfate-rich sedimentary bedrock of the plains meets older, volcanic bedrock exposed at the rim of Endeavour. That location may offer a clue about their origin.

Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit, completed their three-month prime missions on Mars in April 2004. Both rovers continued for years of extended missions and made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life. Spirit stopped communicating in 2010. Opportunity continues exploring, currently heading to a sun-facing slope on the northern end of the Endeavour rim fragment called “Cape York” to keep its solar panels at a favorable angle during the mission’s fifth Martian winter.

“We want to understand why these veins are in the apron but not out on the plains,” said the mission’s deputy principal investigator, Ray Arvidson, of Washington University in St. Louis. “The answer may be that rising groundwater coming from the ancient crust moved through material adjacent to Cape York and deposited gypsum, because this material would be relatively insoluble compared with either magnesium or iron sulfates.”

NASA launched the next-generation Mars rover, the car-sized Curiosity, on Nov. 26. It is slated for arrival at the planet’s Gale Crater in August 2012. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate in Washington. For more information about the rovers, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rovers andhttp://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov . You can follow the project on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MarsRovers and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/marsrovers .

An improved tool debuts today for viewing channels, dunes, boulders and other features revealed in the huge image files from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.  The new tool, HiView, offers the best way to take a personal, virtual hike through any of thousands of square miles of Mars observed by HiRISE, seeing details as small as a desk.  To watch the tutorial video and download the free HiView application, go to: http://www.uahirise.org/hiview/ . 

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been studying Mars with an advanced set of instruments since 2006. It has returned more data about the planet than all other spacecraft combined. For more information about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mro and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro .

HiRISE is operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson, and the instrument was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.  The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft.

New images from Mars Express show the Phlegra Montes mountain range, in a region where radar probing indicates large volumes of water ice are hiding below. This could be a source of water for future astronauts.

Phlegra Montes is a range of gently curving mountains and ridges on Mars. It extends from the northeastern portion of the Elysium volcanic province to the northern lowlands, spanning latitudes from roughly 30°N to 50°N.

The mountains themselves are probably not volcanic in origin, but have been raised by ancient tectonic forces that squeezed different regions of the surface together.

New images from the high-resolution stereo camera on ESA’s Mars Express orbiter allow a closer inspection and show that almost every mountain is surrounded by ‘lobate debris aprons’ – curved features typically observed around plateaus and mountains at these latitudes.

Previous studies have shown that this material appears to have moved down the mountain slopes over time, and looks similar to the debris found covering glaciers here on Earth.

The suggestion then is that there may be glaciers buried just below the surface in this region.  

	Phlegra Montes in context

This interpretation is backed up by the radar on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter looking beneath the martian surface.

The radar shows that lobate debris aprons are indeed strongly associated with the presence of water ice, perhaps only 20 m down.

Further evidence for relatively recent glaciation can be seen inside impact craters in the region. Series of ridges are thought to have developed when the ancient craters filled with snow. Over time, the snow compacted to form glaciers which then sculpted the crater floors.

There are yet more glacial flow patterns visible in the valley at the centre of the image.

It is believed that mid-latitude glaciers developed at various times in the last several hundred million years, when the polar axis of Mars was significantly different from today, leading to quite different climatic conditions.

All of this points to plentiful water ice just below the surface in Phlegra Montes. If this proves to be true, such ice fields could provide future astronauts with a source of water on the Red Planet.

NASA has repeatedly stated that its new mission to Mars, Curiosity, carries no life detector.  Yet, Gilbert V. Levin, Experimenter on NASA’s 1976 Viking Mission, disagrees.  He says instruments aboard Curiosity can confirm his published claim that his Labeled Release (LR) experiment detected living microorganisms on Mars. 

Dr. Levin was Experimenter and Dr. Patricia Ann Straat Co-Experimenter on the experiment that produced evidence of life on Mars.  Because another Viking instrument failed to find organic matter, the stuff of life, NASA discounted the LR results.  Since Viking, Mars missions have sought only evidence of habitability, not life itself.   Levin now claims the organic analyzers and the high-resolution camera on Curiosity as his “stealth life detectors.”

After twenty years of analyzing the LR data, reviewing flaws in Viking’s organic detector, and studying new information on life obtained from Mars and Earth, Levin finally announced his “life claim” in a 1997 publication. Today, he said that, should Curiosity detect organic matter, the last obstacle to his claim to life on Mars will vanish.  Co-Experimenter Straat agrees with Levin, saying, “I look forward to Curiosity data that may confirm our life interpretation of the LR.”

Levin’s other “virtual experiment” is Curiosity’s high-resolution camera.  It might determine whether “lichen-like” colored patches Levin found on rocks at the Viking sites might be living organisms.   Patricia Straat, and JPL’s William Benton assisted him in the study which subjected images of the Mars rocks and terrestrial rocks bearing lichen to the Viking Imaging System.  Visible and infrared spectral analyses found the same responses from the Mars and terrestrial images (Levin, G. V., P. A. Straatand W. D. Benton, “Color and Feature Changes at Mars Viking Lander Site,” J. Theoret. Biol., 75, 381-390, 1978 – available atgillevin.com, tab “Mars Research”).  Levin has now written Dr. Mike Malin, designer of Curiosity’s camera, asking him to seek and take high-resolution pictures of any such patches, hoping to determine whether Viking found living organisms on the rocks.

Levin (see biog. gillevin.com) started his Mars life-seeking efforts in 1958.  Funded by NASA, he began developing the LR.  In 1969, NASA appointed Levin as Team Member of the IRIS experiment aboard the 1971 Mariner 9 Mars orbiter.  Dr. Straat joined that effort in 1970.  They sought organic gases in the Martian atmosphere.  None were found, but recent observers of Mars have claimed detecting methane, possibly of microbial origin.  Following Viking, Levin was appointed Team Member of NASA’s MOx experiment aboard the Russian ’96 Mission to Mars, converting that soil analysis instrument to give it life detection capability.  However, the spacecraft crashed after launch.

“This is a very exciting time,” says Levin, now an adjunct professor at Arizona State University, Tempe, “something for which I have been waiting for years.  At the very least, the Curiosity results may bring about my long-requested re-evaluation of the Viking LR results.”  Levin says this is especially important because Viking was sterilized to prevent contaminating Mars with hitchhiking terrestrial microorganisms.  Since then, none of the many NASA and ESA Mars landers, including Curiosity, have been sterilized.  Thus, any new findings of life might be questioned as to whether the life was indigenous to Mars or came from Earth.  Levin stresses, “The Viking LR life detection data are the only data that will ever be available from a pristine Mars.  They are priceless, and should be thoroughly studied.”

As part of an effort to improve communication with the Russian Space Agency’s Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, modifications are being made to a 15-meter dish antenna at Maspalomas station. Located in the Canary Islands off the Atlantic coast of North Africa, the station provides tracking, telemetry, and other functions in support of the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) of the European Space Agency (ESA).

Last week, ESA succeeded in communicating with Phobos-Grunt on two successive days after a feedhorn antenna was added to an antenna near Perth, Australia similar to the facility in Maspalomas. Although this enabled the downloading of spacecraft telemetry, attempts later in the week to make renewed contact failed. After no attempts were made over the weekend, commands aimed at getting the spacecraft to boost its orbit were sent yesterday, also from Perth, but tracking this morning revealed that the commands had not been executed.

Launched November 9 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan, Grunt is an unpiloted science probe built to travel to Phobos, the larger of Mars’ two small moons. On board is a science payload consisting of numerous instruments designed to elucidate the structure and origin of Phobos, the composition of its surface material, and possibly dust from Mars that may be present as well. A Chinese probe called Yinhuo-1 is to be delivered into orbit around Mars, while the rest of the payload is to land on the Phobosian surface. Some time after landing, a 200 gram sample of the surface is to be deposited into a capsule which then will launch for a journey back to Earth. Also traveling in the return capsule is thePlanetary Society’s Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE), which I helped to design. As with the Phobosian surface sample, the LIFE experiment will be valuable scientifically,only if the return capsule can be returned to Earth.

Although Phobos-Grunt was delivered into space nearly three weeks ago by a Zenit 2 rocket launch that appeared flawless, an upper stage rocket known as Fregat failed to ignite. This left the spacecraft in a low Earth orbit that improved as a result of the automated maneuvering, but that will decay by mid-January if the altitude is not boosted more significantly. Because a low orbit requires a spacecraft to move more swiftly with respect to the ground, communication is extremely limited due both to time and geometry. By allowing Maspalomas to operate similarly to Perth, but from its different location, both geometric and time factors affecting communication will be improved. Should this result in the spacecraft executing commands to climb to a higher orbit, further communication and diagnosis of spacecraft systems then would become much easier.

Learn more about the Maspalomas antenna here.

NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory is tucked inside its Atlas V rocket, ready for launch on Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Nov. 26 launch window extends from 7:02 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. PST (10:02 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. EST). The launch period for the mission extends through Dec. 18. 

The spacecraft, which will arrive at Mars in August 2012, is equipped with the most advanced rover ever to land on another planet. Named Curiosity, the rover will investigate whether the landing region has had environmental conditions favorable for supporting microbial life, and favorable for preserving clues about whether life existed.

On Nov. 26, NASA Television coverage of the launch will begin at 4:30 a.m. PST (7:30 a.m. EST). Live launch coverage will be carried on all NASA Television channels. For NASA Television downlink information, schedule information and streaming video, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv . The launch coverage will also be streamed live on Ustream at http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl .

If the spacecraft lifts off at the start of the launch window on Nov. 26, the following milestones are anticipated. Times would vary for other launch times and dates.

Launch

–The rocket’s first-stage common core booster, and the four solid rocket boosters, will ignite before liftoff. Launch, or “T Zero”, actually occurs before the rocket leaves the ground. The four solid rocket boosters jettison at launch plus one minute and 52 seconds.

Fairing Separation

–The nose cone, or fairing, carrying Mars Science Laboratory will open like a clamshell and fall away at about three minutes and 25 seconds after launch. After this, the rocket’s first stage will cut off and then drop into the Atlantic Ocean.

Parking Orbit

–The rocket’s second stage, a Centaur engine, is started for the first time at about four minutes and 38 seconds after launch. After it completes its first burn of about 7 minutes, the rocket will be in a parking orbit around Earth at an altitude that varies from 102 miles (165 kilometers) to 201 miles (324 kilometers). It will remain there from 14 to 30 minutes, depending on the launch date and time. If launch occurs at the beginning of the launch Nov. 26 launch window, this stage will last about 21 minutes.

On the Way to Mars

– The second Centaur burn, continuing for nearly 8 minutes (for a launch at the opening of the Nov. 26 launch window), lofts the spacecraft out of Earth orbit and sends it toward Mars.

Spacecraft Separation

–Mars Science Laboratory will separate from the rocket that boosted it toward Mars at about 44 minutes after launch, if launch occurs at the opening of the Nov. 26 window. Shortly after that, the separated Centaur performs its last task, an avoidance maneuver taking itself out of the spacecraft’s flight path to avoid hitting either the spacecraft or Mars.

Sending a Message of Good Health

–Once the spacecraft is in its cruise stage toward Mars, it can begin communicating with Earth via an antenna station in Canberra, Australia, part of NASA’s Deep Space Network. Engineers expect to hear first contact from the spacecraft at about 55 minutes after launch and assess the spacecraft’s health during the subsequent 30 minutes. The spacecraft will arrive at the Red Planet Aug. 6, 2012, Universal Time (evening of Aug. 5, 2012, PDT).

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Mars Science Laboratory mission. Launch management is the responsibility of NASA’s Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Atlas V launch service is provided by United Launch Alliance, Denver.

LATEST UPDATES

- Engineers have received data from NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory showing that all systems are operating normally. The approximately eight-month journey to Mars is underway. 
- NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory has separated from the rocket that boosted it toward Mars and has sent a signal to Earth.
- NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory and its rocket are coasting in orbit around Earth before heading to Mars.
- NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory and its Curiosity rover have blasted off on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

NASA began a historic voyage to Mars with the Nov. 26 launch of the Mars Science Laboratory, which carries a car-sized rover named Curiosity. Liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard an Atlas V rocket occurred at 10:02 a.m. EST (7:02 a.m. PST). 

“We are very excited about sending the world’s most advanced scientific laboratory to Mars,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. “MSL will tell us critical things we need to know about Mars, and while it advances science, we’ll be working on the capabilities for a human mission to the Red Planet and to other destinations where we’ve never been.”

The mission will pioneer precision landing technology and a sky-crane touchdown to place Curiosity near the foot of a mountain inside Gale Crater on Aug. 6, 2012. During a nearly two-year prime mission after landing, the rover will investigate whether the region has ever offered conditions favorable for microbial life, including the chemical ingredients for life.

“The launch vehicle has given us a great injection into our trajectory, and we’re on our way to Mars,” said Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager Peter Theisinger of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “The spacecraft is in communication, thermally stable and power positive.”

The Atlas V initially lofted the spacecraft into Earth orbit and then, with a second burst from the vehicle’s upper stage, pushed it out of Earth orbit into a 352-million-mile (567-million-kilometer) journey to Mars.

“Our first trajectory correction maneuver will be in about two weeks,” Theisinger said. “We’ll do instrument checkouts in the next several weeks and continue with thorough preparations for the landing on Mars and operations on the surface.”

Curiosity’s ambitious science goals are among the mission’s many differences from earlier Mars rovers. It will use a drill and scoop at the end of its robotic arm to gather soil and powdered samples of rock interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples into analytical laboratory instruments inside the rover. Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science-instrument payloads on the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the tools are the first of their kind on Mars, such as a laser-firing instrument for checking the elemental composition of rocks from a distance, and an X-ray diffraction instrument for definitive identification of minerals in powdered samples.

To haul and wield its science payload, Curiosity is twice as long and five times as heavy as Spirit or Opportunity. Because of its one-ton mass, Curiosity is too heavy to employ airbags to cushion its landing as previous Mars rovers could. Part of the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft is a rocket-powered descent stage that will lower the rover on tethers as the rocket engines control the speed of descent.

The mission’s landing site offers Curiosity access for driving to layers of the mountain inside Gale Crater. Observations from orbit have identified clay and sulfate minerals in the lower layers, indicating a wet history.

Precision landing maneuvers as the spacecraft flies through the Martian atmosphere before opening its parachute make Gale a safe target for the first time. This innovation shrinks the target area to less than one-fourth the size of earlier Mars landing targets. Without it, rough terrain at the edges of Curiosity’s target would make the site unacceptably hazardous.

The innovations for landing a heavier spacecraft with greater precision are steps in technology development for human Mars missions. In addition, Curiosity carries an instrument for monitoring the natural radiation environment on Mars, important information for designing human Mars missions that protect astronauts’ health.

The mission is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. NASA’s Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida managed the launch. NASA’s Space Network provided space communication services for the launch vehicle. NASA’s Deep Space Network will provide spacecraft acquisition and mission communication.

For more information about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl andhttp://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .

For more information about the Deep Space Network, visit: http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn .

The honor of the “space program” Russian was ridiculed, braided heads would rollin the dust on Mars: just launched on 9 November, the Russian probe Phobos-Grunt had given no sign of life, running on a low orbit around the Earth when it should have s’ soar to one of the satellites of Mars, Phobos, to bring a rock sample.

Fifteen years after the failure of the mission in March 1996, Russia, who was trying to reconnect with the interplanetary space, could s’ estimate cursed and find the culprits. The obituary of the probe was almost rendered, Tuesday, Nov. 22, by Vitaly Davydov, deputy director of Roskosmos, the space agency of the Russian Federation. “Let’s face it, since we have not succeeded in establish communication with the device, there is virtually no chance for this missi on, “ he said.

But the operational teams continued to scan the space, to run short programs toget in contact with the probe, which seemed s’ be placed in secure mode. But turning around the Earth at an altitude of only 200 km, Phobos-Grunt was going too fast over the antennas for these “bottles to the cosmos” can the meet .

Unexpected response

Remote until Tuesday transmitted by an antenna of the European Space Agency in Perth, Australia, receives a response from the probe. This message provided by NPO Lavochkin, the Russian company in charge of the mission, he was asked toactivate the transmitter. The Australian station had been requested because it is currently the best placed, with Phobos-Grunt as a “finder” for almost ten minutes while the solar panels of the probe are oriented towards the Sun, which canfacilitate communications if the batteries were discharged adventure. Two new contacts took place between Wednesday and Thursday, which were outstanding at the time of decoding the supplement was “completed”.

At this point, two options Roskosmos, if the takeover of the probe would be completed. We can continue the mission as it was planned, that is to say start its engines to try to reach Mars and its moons. The problem is that the distance has increased since the initial date of launch: our planet and her cousin are as close as every twenty-five months. The risk for Phobos-Grunt not have the power to make up for lost time. Despite its thirteen tons, much of which fuel energy to go to Phobos, and stop at the finish, is counted.

The alternative is to place the probe in an orbit so-called “parking” between the Earth and the Moon, where she would wait for the next segment, end 2013, fromaround the Red Planet. This period would see any particular software on board, including the scientific teams were aware that he was the weak point of the mission.

This option was favored by Jean-Pierre Bibring , a researcher at the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale in Orsay (CNRS, University Paris-XI), head of one of the instruments on the probe: “The mission is extremely complex, and has been implemented so that the jurisdiction is in Russian reconstruction phase, with some veteran teams. I do not blame them, as they do their best with the means at their disposal. “

These days, the Russian press had echoed the feeling of decay of the space sector. “The biggest problem is the lack of senior management. (…) Our companies are run not by experts but by economists and former officers. There is not a cosmonaut to Roskosmos! one the size of Korolev (father of the Soyuz rocket) or other able to stir ideas, to reach the aims to make advance the space program. If only we had leaders young and talented, he would autremen t “, recently told the site Lenta.ru Igor Marinin, editor of News of Cosmonautics . While Phobos-Grunt resurrected, self-examination is likely to be severe.