ISS Progress 46 Departs
(19 April 2012) — The trash-filled ISS Progress 46 spacecraft departs from the International Space Station on April 19, 2012. Russian flight controllers will command the Progress 46 for several days of tests, and then send it to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.
Link to this post!
Recent headlines were filled with a plethora of information about the reentry of the doomed Russian Spacecraft Phobos Grunt. There have been many rumors and speculation as to why it failed and even threats from the Russian leadership to throw the engineers responsible in jail and punish them.
There are theories ranging from out right sabotage by the United States, to accidental interference, faulty design and even aliens. The Russian newspaper Kommersant quoted an unnamed source who said that tests are being undertaken in Russia to determine whether radar beams from a US military base could have caused a failure in …
Latest status for Phobos-Grunt Re-entry
1/16/11 – Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, leader of defense and industrial sector, put the investigation into the Phobos-Grunt crash case under his personal control.
“I put the investigation in the Phobos-Grunt crash case under personal control. I scheduled a meeting on the issue at the Khimavtomatika design bureau in Voronezh on January 31”.
The Phobos-Grunt debris fell down in the Pacific, 1,250 kilometers west of the Wellington Island (Chile) on Sunday, sin a statement from Air Space Defence Troops Col. Alexei Zolotukhin .
“I expect from the Federal Space Agency a promised report on the reasons …
Quandrantids meteor shower 1/4/12
The Quandrantids meteor shower is expected to put on a spectacular light show, with no pesky moonlight to interfere early Wednesday morning. The peak of the Quadrantids will occur at around 2 a.m. EST (0700 GMT) on Jan. 4.Peaking in the wee morning hours of Jan. 4, the Quadrantids have a maximum rate of about 100 per hour, varying between 60-200. The waxing gibbous moon will set around 3 a.m. local time, leaving about two hours of excellent meteor observing before dawn. It’s a good thing, too, because unlike the more famous Perseid and Geminid meteor showers, …
Phobos Grunt is now officially dead. Russia has stopped attempting to recover the Mars probe. We will be tracking the reentry status on KnowledgeOrb HERE ON THIS LINK
Update 12/14/11 – While just about all hope is lost for recovering the probe there is one last chance the satellite can be saved. The main issue now is that the solar panels are not in the sun enough to charge the batteries enough to hold up the SC bus. Charging needs to be long enough to get commands in and turn on the transmitter, thrusters etc so that the panels then stay …
