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by ibgames

EARTHDATE: February 5, 2012

Official News page 3


REAL LIFE NEWS: DID COSMIC RAYS KILL PHOBOS-GRUNT?

by Hazed

There's a new theory about what caused the malfunction in Phobos-Grunt, the unfortunate Russian space probe that failed to make it out of Earth orbit on its journey to the Martian moon.

After recent claims of sabotage by "foreign influences" (either deliberate or accidental), now the head of the space agency Roscosmos has announced that they have discovered it was radiation that affected the onboard computer system, causing it to fail.

"Two components of the onboard computer system were spontaneously rebooted and it switched into a standby mode," said Vladimir Popovkin. "The most likely reason is the impact of heavy charged space particles."

In other words, cosmic rays.

This doesn't let the dastardly foreigners off the hook, however, because Popovkin said that the failure might be due to defective microchips imported illegally from abroad.

But the cosmic ray theory was ridiculed by scientists almost immediately; a space industry source told the state news agency RIA Novosti that suggesting Phobos-Grunt had no protection from cosmic radiation was "ridiculous". He said (translated by Google Translate), "The spacecraft was supposed to fly into the hostile environment of outer space, I simply can't believe they didn't consider this."

So it seems they are no closer to figuring out what went wrong. But the hunt for an external scapegoat continues because all those concerned want to avoid losing their jobs - or even their freedom - if they are found to be to blame!

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/01/cosmic_rays_crashed_phobos_grunt/


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