How To Create A Conspiracy In One Step
U.S. Removes Phobos-Grunt Data from Web, Aviation Week
“The U.S. military has removed links to Phobos-Grunt tracking data posted on a public website detailing orbital parameters of the ill-fated Russian Mars mission that Russia says reentered Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean Jan. 15. .. But the military deviated from normal practice when it removed links to the spacecraft’s reentry predictions while neglecting to publish final reentry data for the defunct probe Jan. 15. Instead, the site posted a vague statement asserting Phobos-Grunt “decayed within the forecast period of 16:59-17:47″ GMT.”
For good measure they ought to fly some black helicopters by your house.
Haha, look out Stuart.
Keith, any Russian site linking to this now? lol
yup.
This was further corroborated here: http://weeklyworldnews.com
I know what happened…. The X37 maneuvered up behind it and loaded it into the payload bay.
I’ll bet it lands soon 😉
The US probably wants to have a look at the Chinese satellite inside….
The X-37 is too small, I agree in spirit; they probably used the larger (secret) shuttle OV-106 EndeavorspelledwithoutaU
Not smart. Ready, fire, aim…
From space.com:RussianSpaceWeb.com, an English-language website based in Russia. The website cites a brief that was supposedly leaked from space industry sources to the online forum “Novosti Kosmoavtiki” today (Jan. 17).
“The most likely culprit in the failure of the probe’s propulsion unit to ignite soon after it had entered orbit on Nov. 9 was a programming error in the flight control system,” the site states. “Post-failure tests (apparently simulating in-flight conditions) revealed that in 90 percent of cases, the processor of the main flight control computer onboard the spacecraft would be overloaded. It could easily lead to [computer] crashes and rebooting as more systems were being activated after the spacecraft had left the range of Russian ground control stations after reaching orbit.”
Following the initial system crashes, the leaked brief suggests, new problems arose. A transmitter onboard the probe was running extremely inefficiently, consuming 200 watts of power for every 40 watts it transmitted. “As a result, the probe slowly drained its rechargeable power batteries and then its emergency power source, … leading to a complete deactivation of onboard systems on Nov. 28, 2011,” the website states.
Sounds to me like AvWeek is trying to make something out of nothing here. In all of these P-G discussions trying to implicate the military in some conspiracy or another, one thing that I still haven’t seen explained is why the U.S. military would have any interest in P-G beyond collision avoidance considerations in the first place (and, let’s face it, once P-G was about to reenter, it was low enough to be no-factor at that point anyway).
From what I understand, the U.S.’s tracking and detection capabilities are based largely on Cold War-era ballistic missile detection concerns, so a majority of our tracking radars are either looking east and west over the coasts, or north over the pole. P-G went in the drink to the west of the Chilean coast, which is under the horizon from any US tracking assets that I’m aware of.
The US did a better job of tracking UARS, but it made sense in that case: since it was a U.S. spacecraft, the U.S. was liable if it torpedoed someone’s house on the way down. In this case, Russia was liable, so I can’t see why the U.S. military would have any reason to go beyond an “As long as it doesn’t hit us, why should we care?” sort of approach.
I believe that the actions seen on Space Track make sense: the predictions are no longer valid, and the reason they didn’t put any detailed re-entry data up is that they probably don’t have any and don’t have any incentive to put in the work to get it.