[meteorite-list] ESA Suspends Tracking Support to Phobos-Grunt

From: Richard Montgomery <rickmont_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 16:56:18 -0800
Message-ID: <3DAD9615CBA04DEFAF97BD29C3D6CD45_at_bosoheadPC>

Doug, love your passion as always.
-Richard M


----- Original Message -----
From: "MexicoDoug" <mexicodoug at aim.com>
To: <baalke at zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>; <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 3:28 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] ESA Suspends Tracking Support to Phobos-Grunt


> How bitterly sad. I feel like we were about to catch a part of Phobos in
> a fishing net, but the handle of the net was just a centimeter too short
> or we didn't lunge far enough; and plop went the most exciting sample
> return mission since Luna into the deep blue sea.
>
> Then, we saw it under the water and tried again, but the refracted handle
> caused a miss and to the bottom it spiralled down ... which will be the
> case in a few months. It will be interesting to see who, if anyone, steps
> forward to zap this while still aloft. My bet is on China but that would
> be an interesting political situation since the mission is Captained by
> Russia. ahh, what a loss.
>
> How many more chances in our lifetimes? Real material from Phobos, which
> from the beginning (I recall and someone may have referecnes) as a child
> seeing Dad's Sky and Tel mags with Russian images of Phobos. In a
> competitive world it was so interesting how the two early Space pioneers,
> the USSR and the USA, divided up the Solar system for exploration in such
> a peaceful manner and executed all the missions with such pure hopes. I
> miss that competition, and hope the Russian program can recover from this
> terrible setback. Losing the mass of talent there is really a low point
> in space exploration, especially seeing where the current East vs. West
> has ended up, no where near as fun of a race for the home teams as before.
> How can we get this back?
>
> Kindest wishes
> Doug
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ron Baalke <baalke at zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>
> To: Meteorite Mailing List <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Sent: Fri, Dec 2, 2011 5:24 pm
> Subject: [meteorite-list] ESA Suspends Tracking Support to Phobos-Grunt
>
>
> http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Operations/SEMNEO2XFVG_2.html
>
> ESA suspends tracking support to Russian Mars mission
> European Space Agency
> 2 December 2011
>
> In consultation and agreement with Phobos-Grunt mission managers, ESA
> engineers will end tracking support today. Efforts in the past week to
> send
> commands to and receive data from the Russian Mars mission via ESA ground
> stations have not succeeded; no response has been seen from the satellite.
> ESA teams remain available to assist the Phobos-Grunt mission if indicated
> by any change in the situation.
>
>
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Received on Fri 02 Dec 2011 07:56:18 PM PST