Launch News (Failure) Phobos-Grunt and YingHuo-1 atop Zenit-2 on November 8/9, 2011

[Artlav]

http://www.novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=844453#844453

Requested and received an error report frame of telemetry from transit module radio equipment.
Radio equipment works, power is on.
At 3:30 (MSK?) will try to get the telemetry from the main computer.

 

[Ghostrider]

It reopened comms to let us know its demands.

We're all gonna die.

 

[Urwumpe]

It reopened comms to let us know its demands.

We're all gonna die.

I have a tank full of "Deenytrogeenetetrooxyde", and I demand one million dollar...

 

[N_Molson]

*Crosses fingers to that thread tag become one day "Partial Failure"*

 

[orb]

If the next downlink is good, we'll know something more from the received telemetry data after decoding it in the morning:
http://www.interfax.ru/society/news.asp?id=218227


Also, English version of the previously reported news -
RIA Novosti: ESA receives telemetry from Russian Mars probe


Spaceflight Now: Russia scrambles to diagnose glitch on Phobos-Grunt

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

comms slot 1:

ESA: Привет! (Hi!)
Phobos-Grunt: Привет. (Hi!)
ESA: Передай телеметрию! (Transmit telemetry!)
Phobos-Grunt: .
ESA: Передай телеметрию!
Phobos-Grunt: .
ESA: Передай телеметрию!
Phobos-Grunt: .
ESA: Передай телеметрию, пожалуйста! (Transmit telemetry, please!)
Phobos-Grunt: .
<end of comms slot 1...>

1.5 hours later, comms slot 2:

ESA channel: Привет! (Hi!)
Phobos-Grunt: Отвали. (bug off)
ESA channel: Передай телеметрию! (Transmit telemetry!)
Phobos-Grunt: .
ESA channel: Поповкин на проводе, Космос-2474, доложить телеметрию, МАТЬ ТВОЮ! (Popovkin speaking, Cosmos-2474, report telemetry Now, F...ng bastard!)
Phobos-Grunt: Слушаюсь, товарищ генерал армии! Есть доложить телеметрию! (Roger, Comrade General of Army! Yessir, reporting telemetry now!...)
Phobos-Grunt: 10000101110101001001000101010110111...

BTW, it's Cosmos 2478, not 2474 (which was the name given to the GLONASS-M satellite launched on October 2). Back when hopes of communicating with P-G was close to nil, I nearly posted my suggestion of permanently retiring the name Cosmos-2478 in honor of Russia's first attempt in flying in interplanetary space. Luckily I didn't. :thumbup:

 

[orb]

NASASpaceflight: LIVE: Fobos-Grunt recovery efforts underway after telemetry is received

 

[SiberianTiger]

http://phobos.cosmos.ru/index.php?i..._uid=1&thread_uid=21&post_uid=1097&flag=quote

Author: Serge
Posted: Nov 24 2011 - 02:14

Emergency telemetry frame has been received from radiosystem of the cruise stage and transfered to the prime contractor (Lavochkin). The next pass is expected to yield telemetry via onboard flight computer.

Many thanks to European partners for their invaluable efforts and these precious data they had received.

 

[SiberianTiger]

Still no more clear news on what's received. Wishing good luck to Lavochkin specialists on their endeavour...

Meanwhile, such pic appeared:

:lol:

Original picture: http://s004.radikal.ru/i207/1011/0d/21f09cd5dc13t.jpg
(1895, N.P. Bogdanov-Belsky, "A mental reckoning exercise in folk school of S.A. Rachinsky")

 

[SiberianTiger]

The second ESA's attempt to communicate to Phobos-Grunt last night was not successful.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/rolling_news/2011/11/111124_rn_fobos_grunt_failed_attempt.shtml

24/11 07:00 GMT 11:00 MSK

According to John Holt, manager of ESA Perth station, such an attempt was made two hours ago.

 

[Linguofreak]

МАТЬ ТВОЮ!

Now, more literally that would be "YO MAMA!", right?

Your existing translation is good, 'cause I don't think "yo mama" really works in that context in English (it would in a lot of very similar contexts, though), I'm just asking about literal meaning.

 

[N_Molson]

That probe is really a capricious one !

 

[SiberianTiger]

Now, more literally that would be "YO MAMA!", right?

Your existing translation is good, 'cause I don't think "yo mama" really works in that context in English (it would in a lot of very similar contexts, though), I'm just asking about literal meaning.

Sent you a PM regarding this.

Meanwhile...
http://users.livejournal.com/___lin___/178444.html

Nov 24th. There's a rumor that the received telemetry cannot be processed. ESA stations "spoil" the data while passing through their decoder. Next night we'll try another approach that might work.

 

[Artlav]

Have they tried to read the telemetry as ASCII/cp1251 code page text?
It may just be a bunch of curse words.

 

[SiberianTiger]

Meanwhile...
http://users.livejournal.com/___lin___/178444.html

Same thing is confirmed by ria novosti, but with a reference to an anonymous source as well:
http://ria.ru/science/20111124/496766305.html

 

[SiberianTiger]

Have they tried to read the telemetry as ASCII/cp1251 code page text?
It may just be a bunch of curse words.

Knowledgeable people are saying that the problem was that the data have been received should be encoded according to CCSDS standard, and there were some problems with decoding that.

 

[RisingFury]

Knowledgeable people are saying that the problem was that the data have been received should be encoded according to CCSDS standard, and there were some problems with decoding that.

So... re-encode it using whatever incorrect algorithm they used, then decode it again correctly?


Man! That is one grumpy lil probe...

 

[orb]

RIA Novosti: Data beamed from Russian probe ‘indecipherable’

 

[SiberianTiger]

So... re-encode it using whatever incorrect algorithm they used, then decode it again correctly?

Man! That is one grumpy lil probe...

Assumingly, there's a problem with correct demodulation of the intercepted signal. Modulation and carrier wave tracking is alone a black magic of radio physics, and not picking right inputs might results in a garbled set of bits at the output end.

upd: http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/246006/

A source: "Due to incompatibility of channel frequencies, the signal recorded by the European station that communicated to Phobos-Grunt comes to us badly distorted. We can't "read" it yet. We have taken this into account and this Friday's morning Perth station will attempt to take hopefully readable information in a new manner."

Also, some possibly worrying news:

According to the publicly available TLE, PhG has stopped raising it's perigee, which behavior was noticed in the beginning of this week:

One possible reason might be simple running out of RCS fuel...

 

[garyw]

ESA station keeps contact with Russian Mars mission Phobos-Grunt

24 November 2011
Following the first successful contact on Tuesday, ESA's tracking station in Australia again established two-way communication with Russia's Phobos–Grunt spacecraft on 23 November. The data received from the spacecraft have been sent to the Russian mission control centre for analysis.

ESA's 15 m-diameter antenna at Perth, Australia, was again used to contact Russia's Phobos–Grunt spacecraft during the night of 23–24 November, with a total of five communication passes available between 20:19 and 04:08 GMT.

Teams working at the Perth station and at ESA's Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany, were delighted to see a clear signal during the first of the passes.

"The first pass was successful in that the spacecraft's radio downlink was commanded to switch on and telemetry was received," said Wolfgang Hell, ESA's Service Manager for Phobos–Grunt.

Telemetry typically includes information on the status and health of a spacecraft's systems.

"The signals received from Phobos–Grunt were much stronger than those initially received on 22 November, in part due to having better knowledge of the spacecraft's orbital position."

The second pass was short, and so was used only to uplink commands – no receipt of signal was expected.

However, the following three passes in the early morning of 24 November proved to be more difficult: no signal was received from Phobos–Grunt.

source: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Operations/SEM5AJZW5VG_0.html