Bring Your Umbrella

It’s a nice morning. You want to go outside, maybe rake the lawn, prep the snow blower, tidy up around the old casa or any number of things. Maybe you just want to go to church and holler up some props to God and see your friends. Whatever it is you plan on doing, I feel it only fair to mention that you should also prepare to hide deep underground as twelve tons of toxic waste are due to plummet from on high and could kill everything within a mile or two of impact.

Of course, scientists say there’s not much to worry about.

Those would be the same scientists who, in the 60’s, told us to quit worrying about the damn ozone layer since they had important things to do like watch Gilligan. Yessiree Bob, that Gilligan always makes them laugh.

In other words, you can feel free to worry a little.

Our old pal, Ian O’Neill over at Discovery News has the whole story.

It’s hard to believe that only last week we were getting excited for Russia’s first interplanetary mission in 15 years to launch. By now, we should be happy in the knowledge that the ambitious — and awesome — mission is powering through space, toward the Martian moon Phobos.

The reality is that we are now discussing uncontrolled reentry scenarios.

As if that wasn’t enough bad news, we are looking at an uncontrolled toxic reentry scenario. Phobos-Grunt — correctly written “Fobos-Grunt,” meaning “Phobos-Soil” or “Phobos-Ground” — is fully-laden with unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide; that’s ten tons of fuel and oxidizer. The probe itself weighs-in at only three tons.

The majority of the fuel will likely vaporize during reentry, but everyone will be hoping for a splash-down in an ocean (which covers two-thirds of Earth, fortunately), as the wreckage will still be hazardous. There’s also a small quantity of radioactive cobalt-57 in one of the science missions housed in the probe — a fact that will most likely cause a media frenzy.

It is for these reasons that the Russian media is dubbing Phobos-Grunt “Most toxic falling satellite ever.”

(NOTE: At time of writing, there is no official word from the Russian space agency about the Phobos-Grunt situation.)

Though Russian mission controllers are frantically trying to regain control of the craft, it’s not looking good. Today’s efforts are widely regarded as a last-ditch attempt to salvage the mission. Other space agencies such as NASA and ESA have offered to assist, but it’s looking like the probe is quickly becoming unrecoverable.

“Last night there were several attempts to obtain telemetry information from the unit. All of them ended with a zero result. The probability of saving the (probe) is very, very small,” an anonymous industry source told Interfax (translated from Russian).

Since Phobos-Grunt was placed in low-Earth orbit (LEO) on Tuesday, and the probe successfully separated from its booster rocket, its attached cruise stage rocket has yet to light up, providing a critical two burns to blast the probe away from Earth to begin its planned 10-month journey to the Red Planet.

It is unknown whether there’s a software error or hardware glitch, but attempts to upload new commands to the on board computers have so far failed to change the situation. Phobos-Grunt’s batteries are draining and its orbit is degrading. It looks as if the probe will reenter later this month/early December. NORAD is putting a Nov. 26 reentry date on Phobos-Grunt.

And guess what? This will be the third large piece of space junk to reenter in an uncontrolled manner this year. In September, NASA’s 6-ton UARS atmospheric satellite burned-up over the Pacific. In October, the German 2.4-ton ROSAT X-ray space mission reentered over the Bay of Bengal. Could November be the third consecutive reentry month?

Like UARS and ROSAT, the likely Phobos-Grunt reentry will be uncontrolled and at the mercy of a highly dynamic upper atmosphere. Also, the probe’s orbit takes it between the latitudes 51.4 degrees North to 51.4 degrees South — most of the world’s population lives within that zone, and Phobos-Grunt could come down anywhere. Despite the fact that pieces of the probe will hit the ground, it is still extremely unlikely it will cause death and destruction, however.

The demise of Phobos-Grunt will be a huge loss to the scientific community. Not only was the mission designed to land and scoop-up some regolith (dust and rock) from Phobos’ surface, returning it to Earth for analysis, it is also carrying a fascinating Planetary Society experiment called the Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment, or “LIFE.”

LIFE is composed of many different types of bacteria to small organisms that seem to tolerate the space environment pretty well. Tardigrades — known as water bears — were also a part of the payload.

What was the point of sending microscopic organisms to a Martian moon?

In an effort to understand how life appeared on Earth, the experiment would have put the hypothesis of “panspermia” to the test. Panspermia is a proposed mechanism by with life may “hop” from one planetary body to the next — meteorites slamming into Mars, say, ejecting many tons of debris into space. Should any organisms be “hitching a ride” on the debris, could they (or at least their genetic information) survive the interplanetary journey, and atmospheric entry, to spawn life on another world?

Alas, the LIFE experiment has been cut short. The first Chinese Mars satellite, Yinghuo-1, was also hitching a ride and won’t go any further than LEO either.

So what now? As we await the inevitable reentry of Phobos-Grunt, it would appear the Russian authorities are looking for someone to blame after a string of mission failures. According to a (translated) Interfax bulletin, an anonymous (expert) source indicated this may force reform in the Russian space agency, Roscosmos. Also, “a number of positions of responsible persons” could face jail time.

I think it’s about time we ask those tardigrades for a favor…

As noted in a different article in Discovery, the Russians are really having a bad hair day.

The mishap caps an inglorious list for Russia’s space program in the 50th anniversary year of Yuri Gagarin’s first flight into space.

Three navigation satellites plunged into the sea after a failed launch in December and Russia has since lost new military and telecommunications satellites upon launch.

The accident also comes just days before Russia is due to resume manned space flights to the International Space Station that ground to a halt in August with the crash of a cargo craft.

The Russian Space Agency is set to announce that the mission is doomed and then pray like all holy heck that the damn thing lands in an ocean. Any ocean will do. Of course, if there was any justice in the world it would land in Roswell and finally give them something real to talk about.

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