The November launch of the Phobos-Grunt probe from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on the Kazakh steppe was meant to take Russia back to deep space after a decade-long absence.

To the embarrassment of Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, the more than $163 million probe failed to leave earth orbit on its intended trajectory towards a moon of Mars, to retrieve soil samples. Instead, the satellite spiraled aimlessly out of control before its batteries ran out, crashing last month into the Pacific Ocean.

Some Russian experts originally blamed U.S. radar for interfering with the probe's onboard computer system, causing it to crash.

Russian Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin brought up the theory, soon after the probe's failure. He said Russian space craft often fail during the part of the flight invisible to and uncontrolled by Russia's space agency.

Speaking recently on state-run television, satellite communications executive Sergei Pekhterev said he does not believe the United States would intentionally try to damage Russian space craft.

He said in order to make a satellite go down under artificial conditions, very complex work needs to be done. "It is really hard to imagine that the United States has spent billions of dollars to hit Phobos-Grunt," Pekhterev said. He added that he doubts it would happen.

New Eurasia Foundation analyst Andrei Kortunov dismissed the accusations more directly.

"In every country you will find a couple of freaks who will tell you that it is the international conspiracy to make all the problems," said Kortunov. "If the United States was in a position to shoot down a Russian satellite they would not need a strategic-weapons program to develop. It is something that does not exist. Those who are thinking in these terms are crazies."

Earlier this week, Roscosmos blamed the Phobos-Grunt failure on heavily charged particles in near space. Agency chief Vladimir Popovkin, says the particles interfered with the probe's computer memory. Popovkin also said the initial investigation found foreign parts played a role in the satellite's demise.

Analyst Kortunov said using outside parts is necessary.

"It is also clear that no country in the world can produce everything it needs," he said. "We have to rely on each other, we have to trust each other."

Other recent failures include last summer's loss of a cargo vessel bound for the International Space Station. The cargo failed to leave earth orbit, crashing into Siberia.

Pekhterev told Russian TV the country's space agency does not have the financial support it used to and therefore mishaps keep occurring.

He says during Soviet times, there was more funding to support the country's space program. "Now, there are no funds to support these expensive facilities that used to involve hundreds of scientists and crew," he added.

President Dmitry Medvedev has acknowledged Russia's space program needs more funding and has promised an increase for the organization as part of his modernization effort. According to government figures, Roscosmos received more than $3 billion in 2011, nearly triple the amount it received in 2007.

But Roscosmos has revealed the next manned launch, using a Soyuz rocket, to the International Space Station has been delayed due to technical problems.

Kortunov, with the new Eurasia foundation, says Russia has experienced setbacks, but that should not be too worrisome.

"There were some issues, but this [Soyuz] is the most reliable vehicle designed by man," Kortunov said. "If you look at the number of launches compared to the track record of the shuttle."

Kortunov says the way to guarantee the best space program is for international cooperation. "We must make sure we work together," he stressed.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 08:59:20 AEST Sydney, Australia (RIA Novosti) Feb 06, 2012 - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will discuss bilateral cooperation in high-tech industries, including space and nuclear power, during his one-day working visit to Australia on Tuesday.

The visit marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries. "Moscow regards Australia as an important and prospective partner in the fast-developing Asia-Pacific region," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

During the visit, Lavrov will meet with Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, Defense Minister Stephen Smith, as well as with a host of businessmen and members of Russian community in Australia.

The talks with Australian officials will focus on bilateral cooperation in nuclear power, space and mining industries, information technologies and agriculture, the ministry said.

Russia and Australia signed a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement in September 2007. Australia, the global leader in uranium production, agreed to supply fuel to Russia for conversion and use in its nuclear reactors.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 08:59:20 AEST Moscow, Russia (RIA Novosti) Feb 02, 2012 - The Russian space agency Roscosmos announced the cause of the Phobos-Grunt space probe failure on Tuesday: it was a software malfunction in its onboard computer. But doubts still persist. Russia's space industry is currently going through a system-wide crisis which provokes one setback after another.

Why the Martian program failed
On Tuesday morning the newspaper Kommersant, quoting sources from the space industry, reported that the malfunctioning Phobos-Grunt probe to Mars was the result of an error in its onboard computer caused by a software failure. This report was seen as an acknowledgement of a mistake in the computer program.

But in the afternoon, speaking at a meeting on Russia's space effort, Vladimir Popovkin, Roscosmos director, added some details to the explanation. "Two sets were rebooted and so computer reverted to energy-saving and command-waiting mode," confirming the story carried by Kommersant. Then he added a new twist: "The most likely cause, according to the commission, was the effect of heavily charged particles on the facility."

Then he made another clarification. In his view, it was (probably) counterfeit microcircuits that were affected by the exposure. This reference was to imported components with a linear resolution in the lithographic process of 90 nm (instead of 200 nm as in previous equipment).

The facts and data disclosed by Popovkin can be interpreted tentatively and specifically as follows: the Phobos computational facility failed because of the degradation of its electronic core under the impact of cosmic particles.

The question of why the electronics performed so poorly needs a separate investigation. Popovkin's explanation is rife with inconsistencies and experts are now voicing their doubts. But let us assume that what the space chief reported is true and not an attempt to cover up the real picture.

The use of standard commercial microcircuits instead of radiation-protected parts may be the most likely cause of the sudden failure of the equipment (and the word "counterfeit" goes to support this version).

If it emerges that corruption was involved in fulfilling the probe's specifications, it could lead to criminal persecution. If, however, it was an ill-formulated request for components, the penalty may be reduced to a few sackings. The public was assured that onboard systems being developed for new probes would be under close scrutiny.

If anything, draconian inspection measures will finally have to be adopted, as Roscosmos top management has been insisting for several months, measures that saved the Bulava project.

An attack from Mars
Yet all sorts of stories were peddled about the Phobos probe in the winter of 2011-2012. First, in an Izvestia interview, Popovkin said he suspected outside interference in the recent series of accidents that have hit Russian spacecraft outside radio contact area.

Then the press leaked information from sources close to the commission: they said they were seriously concerned about the interference of U.S. radar. Eventually, Yury Koptev, the commission head, admitted this suspicion and said there were plans to test it. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, concerned with defense matters, did not rule out the possibility either. There appeared to be enemies everywhere.

For several days, the media and online news services gleefully added to the speculation, while half of them were tired of poking fun at the helpless story, the other half was laboriously and stubbornly digging up any speck of evidence to back the external influence story.

All kinds of conspiracies were proffered, including blaming HAARP in Alaska, a traditional villain, allegedly responsible for numerous misfortunes including tsunamis and earthquakes.

Experts rushed to substantiate these theories with their calculations but soon shook their heads: no, U.S. radar facilities could not have interfered given their limited beam power and their narrow directional parameters. Any accurate hit was highly unlikely.

In the end, even Deputy Prime Minister Rogozin, who had not ruled out external influence, backed down a bit, writing in his Twitter, ironically, that "Martians and their dirty tricks" were to blame for the failure.

As the commission continued to keep silent, leaks dripped out, one more conflicting than the next. Indeed, other unpalatable tales followed after the exotic "external impact" theory.

One rumor blamed solar activity which, it claimed, proved too strong for the Phobos, having caused "a plasma cloud" in the atmosphere. Ionosphere experts dismissed this theory out of hand. They also once again buried the fable about the likely involvement of the HAARP project in killing off the Phobos probe.

It was then that information filtered through that the probe might have been let down by its counterfeit chips at a critical moment. The industry rejected the guess with indignation, describing in detail its traditions of strict quality control. But, as was evident later, it was out of line with this response.

Phobos-Grunt failed on the ground
This failure did not emerge out of thin air. The development of the probe was long and difficult with a very checkered history. With work stepped up in 2006, the launch was first scheduled for the end of 2009. But the developers failed to keep this schedule and the launch was put off for two more years, until the fall of 2011.

The official explanation was that some units of the robot which was to pick up soil samples from the Phobos surface were not ready. Unofficially, it was quietly reported that the probe was far from finished and not ready for its mission at all, and that the design of the onboard computational facility and control system had run into formidable difficulties.

Throughout 2011 there were frequent leaks from project developers that the probe was not ready for launch in November. Popovkin admitted this indirectly after the launch, saying the risk was great but the effort worthwhile.

Commenting on the Phobos-Grunt saga, it must be noted that by that time a system-wide crisis had become apparent in the industry in all its naked indecency.

Martians or Americans could not have inflicted, or cannot inflict, more damage on the Russian space industry than it has suffered (and will continue to suffer through inertia) from purely internal reasons: failures in the personnel policy and random and irregular changes in the industry. These purely internal reasons have long been requiring the adoption of internal measures, as distinct from the time-hallowed "fund-allocation and fund-utilization" tandem formula.

Sending a five-billion ruble research project to the bottom of the Pacific because of savings on a Taiwanese microchip (or a mistake in poorly designed software) is too costly even for a leading space power, which many still call Russia out of habit.

The views expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 08:59:20 AEST Moscow (RIA Novosti) Jan 31, 2012 - Russia's state space agency Roscosmos has launched a cosmonaut selection competition, Roscosmos said on its web site on Friday.

Candidates should apply with the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. A lucky few will be selected for cosmonaut training by a commission made up of representatives of the training center, rocket and space corporation Energia and the Institute of Biomedical Problems.

The Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center also held a recruitment contest for potential cosmonauts last year. The contest targeted a broad spectrum of people, but mainly those employed in the rocket and space industry.

Source: RIA Novosti

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 08:59:20 AEST Moscow (XNA) Jan 25, 2012, Jan. 24 - The Russian government has fully financed its space research programs until 2016, including two Moon expeditions, a leading Russian aerospace company Lavochkin said Tuesday.

According to Lavochkin Research and Production center head Victor Khartov, Russia plans to send two mission to the Moon, one to Venus and launch several scientific satellites for deeper space research by 2016.

"All the projects planned for 2015-2016 have been financed rationally with the clear deadlines for their completion," Khartov told a cosmonaut conference here.

He said Russian scientists were working together with the European Space Agency for the joint missions to Mars in 2016 and 2018, as well as to Jupiter and asteroid Apophis.

"There are poposals to fly to Apophis to plant a radio beacon, which would help to follow the small planet's orbit and minimize the risk of its collision with Earth," Khartov said.

He said, although the failure of the Phobos-Grunt probe last November had hampered preparations for other space missions, Russia planned to repeat the attempt.

"We have no other option. Russia must fulfill the task it has set for itself," Khartov was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying.

The Phobos-Grunt mission to explore a Mars moon failed a few hours after its launch on Nov. 9, 2011 and its wreckage fell to Earth in January.

The Lavochkin corporation is a major player in the Russian space program. It has developed and manufactured the Fregat rocket upper stage, interplanetary probes such as the Phobos-Grunt, and other satellites.

Source: Xinhua News Agency

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 08:59:20 AEST Moscow (RIA Novosti) Jan 13, 2012 - The head of Roskomos, Vladimir Popovkin, has insinuated that the embarrassing failure of Phobos-Grunt (which I wrote about earlier) could be attributed to a shadowy plot of some kind. "I don't want to blame anyone, but there are powerful means of affecting [the performance] of spacecraft out there," Popovkin told Izvestia. "We cannot discount the possibility that they were used."

To back up this claim, Popovkin pointed out that there is something "inexplicable about the problems with our spacecraft when they're [on the other side of the planet and can't be monitored properly]."

Vague insinuations of sabotage are a dogwhistle for those who are more than eager to write off any such failure on the work of Russia's enemies abroad.

Unfortunately for Popovkin, any thinking person will immediately see his words for what they are - without a concrete theory as to how and why Phobos-Grunt may have been sabotaged, this looks to be a classic means of passing the buck.

Phobos-Grunt was not just a disappointment for Russia - it carried a Chinese Mars Orbiter and microorganisms that were supposed to be part of an experiment by the Planetary Society, which was aimed at testing how certain organisms survive in deep space (and whether or not they survive at all).

At a time like this, the need to point fingers is particularly high. People are coming off the winter holiday high, and everyone's in a bad mood already - without the lifeless Phobos-Grunt spinning uselessly in a low orbit, ready to crash down to Earth, Icarus-style.

Yet admitting a technical failure makes an agency look way, way better than hinting at the possibility of sabotage. The fact that Popovkin merely hinted is what makes it look particularly bad - a bolder claim would at least make Roskmos look as though it's willing to put its reputation on the line.

As such, this is just an attempt to divert attention away from the controversy surrounding the doomed spacecraft safely, a.k.a. eating your cake and having it too.

Popovkin did much better when he pointed out the good reputation of Russia's Soyuz rockets in the same interview - which have done a good job with missions to the International Space Station.

At a time like this, it's best to play up one's strengths and admit one's weaknesses - and unmanned Mars missions are certainly a kind of an Achilles heel for Russia's space program at this time, while the Soyuz rockets, as cosmonaut Andre Kuipers told my colleague Olaf Koens recently, are a reliable classic.

Popovkin's hints of sabotage also took away from another good point he made to Izvestia - and that is whether or not the constant presence of people in space is sustainable right now.

Considering both space pollution and the global economic crisis, his doubt on this is certainly something to reflect on at this time - no matter how much of a bummer it would be to see the glittering lights of the ISS extinguished for the time being.

Source: RIA Novosti

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 08:59:20 AEST Moscow (AFP) Jan 10, 2012 - The head of Russia's beleaguered space programme hinted on Tuesday that foreign powers may be behind the string of failures that struck his agency in the past year.

Roskosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin told the Izvestia daily he could not understand why several launches went awry at precisely the moment the spacecraft were travelling through areas invisible to Russian radar.

"It is unclear why our setbacks often occur when the vessels are travelling through what for Russia is the 'dark' side of the Earth -- in areas where we do not see the craft and do not receive its telemetry readings," he said.

"I do not want to blame anyone, but today there are some very powerful countermeasures that can be used against spacecraft whose use we cannot exclude," Popovkin told the daily.

One of Russia's most high-profile recent failures involved the November launch of a Mars probe called Phobos-Grunt that got stuck in a low Earth orbit and whose fragments are now expected to crash back down on Sunday.

Popovkin said there was "no clarity" as to why the 13.5-tonne probe's booster rocket failed to fire on schedule.

But he admitted the mission was risky to begin with because it involved an underfunded project whose original designs went back to Soviet times.

"If we did not manage to launch it in the window open in 2011 for a Mars mission, we would have had to simply throw it away, writing off a loss of five billion rubles ($160 million)," he said.

Popovkin was named the head of Russia's space agency in April after its previous chief was sacked in the wake of an embarrassing loss of three navigation satellites during launch.

Yet the problems only multiplied under his watch as Russia lost several more satellites and also saw its Progress cargo ship experience its first-ever failure on a mission to the International Space Station.

The Mars mission setback was followed last month by the loss of the Meridian communications satellite. Its fragments crashed into the Novosibirsk region of central Siberia and hit a house ironically located on Cosmonaut Street.

No injuries were reported but the 50-centimetre (20-inch) fragment blew a hole in the home's roof.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 08:59:20 AEST Mumbai (UPI) Dec 30, 2011 - A statue of the world's first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, was unveiled Friday in Mumbai on the grounds of the Nehru Science Center, center officials said.

Dignitaries attending the unveiling ceremony Friday included Russian Ambassador to India Alexander Kadakin, Russian General Consul in Mumbai Alexei Novikov and Mumbai Mayor Shraddha Jadhav.

"Gagarin is a man who is known and loved around the world, including India. He visited India and was in Bombay, as Mumbai was called then. Mumbai's older generation still remembers his visit," Anil Manekar, the director of the Nehru Science Center, told RIA Novosti.

About 700,000 people visit the Science Center each year, he said.

"Interest in science, in space research, is very high in India. We are confident this bust of Gagarin will be an important attraction for our center," he said.

The bust of Gagarin has been placed near the Science Center's main entrance.

India already has another monument to Gagarin, located on the grounds of the Russian Science and Culture Center in the southern city of Trivandum.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 08:59:20 AEST Moscow (RIA Novosti) Dec 30, 2011 - Russia's space agency Roscosmos has been given until January to rectify security at its plants or face the consequences, after a reported penetration of its rocket plant in northern Moscow.

A group of Russian bloggers claimed in a report posted on the Internet that they managed to get inside the Energomash plant in Moscow's Khimki district, which manufactures liquid-propellant engines for civilian and military rockets.

They were able to wander about and take pictures for five days, and did not see any security officers.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said harsh measures would be taken to enforce security and punish the "sleepy cats" responsible for the plant's security.

"There will be no freewheeling," he told Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin, and also gave a warning to the bloggers, who he called "cheeky mice."

"I don't advise anybody to penetrate strategic installations anymore," he said.

The Energomash plant can be accessed through holes in the fence, which it has no money to repair, Energia rocket and space corporation's Senior Vice President Vladimir Osmolovsky told Izvestia newspaper.

Source: RIA Novosti

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 08:59:20 AEST Moscow (RIA Novosti) Dec 24, 2011 - Russia's space industry needs an influx of new faces to overcome its current crisis, the head of the Roscosmos agency said on Friday, hours after a satellite crashed in southern Siberia.

"The space branch is suffering a crisis. We must resolve this situation and give way to the youth...Perhaps it's time for reshuffle," agency chief Vladimir Popovkin said.

Popovkin was speaking after the crash of Meridian dual purpose satellite launched from the Plesetsk space center in northern Russia on board a Soyuz-2 carrier rocket. Aerospace Forces spokesman Col. Alexei Zolotukhin said the satellite fel to earth just minutes after take-off.

Initial reports said debris was found near the south Siberian city of Tobolsk, but later a police source said that fragments of the satellite were spotted in four residential areas in the nearby Novosibirsk region.

Russia has experienced a number of launch mishaps in the past 13 months.

On 18 August, a Proton vehicle failed to put a communications satellite in its proper orbit.

On 1 February, a Rokot launch also saw a similar outcome.

And on 5 December last year, a Proton carrying three navigation spacecraft fell into the Pacific Ocean. This particular failure is widely believed to have contributed to the decision of the Russian government to replace the then space agency chief, Anatoly Perminov.

Popovkin took over as the head of Roscosmos in April.

The rocket failures come on top of the loss of Phobos-Grunt, Russia's most ambitious planetary mission in decades. It became stuck in Earth orbit after its launch in November and is expected to fall back to Earth next month.

Source: RIA Novosti

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