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REAL LIFE NEWS: WAS PHOBOS-GRUNT SCUPPERED BY US RADAR?

by Hazed

Last week I told you that the head of the Russian space agency had been muttering darkly about possible sabotage being the cause of the malfunction in the Phobos-Grunt space probe (see http://www.ibgames.net/fednews/120115/official08.html).

A few days later, another theory was proposed for the reason that the stricken craft didn't make it any further than Earth orbit: it was all the fault of US radars, which interfered with Phobos-Grunt - maybe accidentally, maybe intentionally. This is courtesy of news website RIA Novosti reporting on a Rusian government commission who were investigating the failure.

The Russian finger of blame is being pointed at US radar stationed on the Marshall Islands "whose megawatt impulse triggered the malfunctioning of onboard electronics."

The commission want to set up a test where a mock Phobos-Grunt is exposed to the kind of radiation given out by American detectors, to see if it causes the same problems.

But Ria Novosti later found some Russian scientists who thought theory this was baloney. "Consider the power of the impact. I don't think the Americans have radars capable of ensuring such power at such an altitude [about 200 km]," said Alexander Zakharov of the Russian Academy Space Research Institute, which developed the probe's equipment and research programme.

He thinks these wild theories are an attempt to find some external agency to blame, rather than accept that the design or implementation of Phobos-Grunt was flawed. This makes sense - since the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, has said that those guilty will be punished either financially, or with disciplinary or even criminal proceedings, everyone will be scrabbling not to end up taking the blame.

Another Russian magazine, Novosti Kosmonavtiki, has come up with a much more likely theory: it was a software bug. Yeah, that makes a whole lot more sense.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/18/phobos_grunt_us_radar_sabotage/

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