All about Mars - Post Mars information here

[American Patriot]

Well, I can certainly see where someone might claim it is a statue or something, because there's really not much perspective of vision here. But, I doubt HIGHLY that this was a Jawa or some other Starwars figure making his way down a hill. haha

[Ryan Ruck]

You all are marching down the wrong path...



WOOKIEES ARE REAL!!!

[MTStringer]

Ryan, that's the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw the pic Rick posted.
Rick, it wasn't Hoagy I was trying to remember, him I remember well enough, the poster I'm trying to remember was less professional and even more annoying, if I may be so blunt here. I really don't want to insult anyone so I prefer to go no further and let it drop.

[American Patriot]

Tripp

[PsycoJoe]

No, I believe he means Explorer, or MarsExplorer, or something like that. (Member file was deleted during one of the 'purges'. Not by me, though.)

[American Patriot]

LOL Not by you huh? I know now. MarsExplorer. Yup.

[American Patriot]

US Space Agency Believes It May Have Found Ice on Mars
By VOA News 20 June 2008

P Sisco's Mars Exploration report / Broadband - Download (WM)
P Sisco's Mars Exploration report / Broadband - Watch (WM)
P Sisco's Mars Exploration report / Dialup - Download (WM)
P Sisco's Mars Exploration report / Dialup - Watch (WM)

White material, possibly ice, is located only at the upper portion of the trench, indicating that it is not continuous throughout the excavated site

The U.S. Space Agency NASA says it believes its Phoenix Mars lander may have uncovered bits of ice on the planet.

NASA says the lander's robotic arm dug a trench in the Martian arctic June 15, exposing bits of a bright material that were photographed.

The dice-size crumbs completely disappeared over the course of a few days, leading investigators to believe that the material was frozen water that vaporized after it was exposed.

The mission's lead investigator, Peter Smith, said the material's disappearance "is perfect evidence that it's ice."

The agency initially believed the bright material may have been salt, but Smith said salt would not have evaporated as the material did.

The Phoenix probe landed on Mars on May 25.

It was designed to use its onboard laboratories to test Martian soil to learn the history of water on the planet and to look for the presence of organic compounds.

[Brian Baldwin]

Scientists found a rock similar to the "venus" carvings by Cromagnon Man in the Sahara that would have been during the time of Homo Erectus... Later they realised it was most likely a natural occurance of erosion. That little rock that looks like a manform on Mars is likely nothing more extreme than that. It is my belief that Mars was never populated with anything more complex than simple life forms and/or plants during it's warm period.

I do however agree with Rick that we'll discover Intelligent life in a century or a bit more. Or rather they'll wave back at us.

[MTStringer]

Bacteria from Mars found inside ancient meteorite

Martian bacteria arrived on Earth on a meteorite which smashed into the Antarctic 13,000 years ago, Nasa scientists believe.



By Ben Leach
Published: 10:12AM GMT 26 Nov 2009

Mars Photo: GETTY


Their fossilised remains have been found in the rock, which was blasted out of Mars 16 million years ago as the solar system was forming.
The meteorite, called Allen Hills 84001, made headlines in 1996 after fossils were found in it. Scientists believed they were bacteria from Earth that contaminated the rock while it lay in the frozen wastes.




But a Nasa report now says there is strong evidence they originated on Mars, according to The Sun.
Dr Emily Baldwin, deputy editor of the UK's Astronomy Now magazine, said: "Many scientists argued that what looked like fossils in the meteorite were really caused by the explosive event, such as an asteroid impact, that blasted the rock out of Mars in the first place.
"But the Nasa team is now saying they have proved that they could not have been produced by the blast itself.
"If the features turn out to have an extraterrestrial, biological origin and were not formed during the 13,000 years the meteorite spent lying on Earth, this will have profound implications for our understanding of how life evolved in the solar system."
Prof Colin Pillinger, of the Open University, who was behind Britain's ill-fated Beagle 2 probe to the planet that was lost on Christmas Day 2003, said: "This is good quality work and more compelling evidence to add to the mix. These guys have been plugging away at this for years. It is a very careful study by very reputable people."
The Nasa study, led by Kathie Thomas-Keprta, found carbonate discs and tiny magnetite crystals inside the space rock. Scientists were able to use high resolution electron microscopes that were not available 13 years ago.
They concluded "unusual chemical and physical properties" in the meteorite were "intimately associated within and throughout these carbonate disks". That, they said, was evidence of interaction with water on Mars more than 3.5 billion years ago.
Nasa is expected to announce the findings, from its Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, later this week.







200920092009

[American Patriot]

Awesome

I was right. I predicted we WOULD find life out there. Well, close enough anyway

[American Patriot]

August 7, 2011 10:49 AM EDT




Scientists Discover Rare Flowing Water on Mars, Supports Alien Life

Scientists have discovered evidence of flowing salt water on Mars, which has ignited debate about potential alien life within the planet's surface. The images sent from NASA's orbiter show waters descending from rocky slopes.

Information from the orbiter has added new fuel to the discussion on Mars' capability of supporting alien life forms. Scientists have sent numerous space missions in obtaining a variety of evidence that may reveal biological microbial life outside of Earth.

"NASA's Mars Exploration Program keeps bringing us closer to determining whether the Red Planet could harbor life in some form ... and it reaffirms Mars as an important future destination for human exploration," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

Mars contains many crevices, perhaps remains of dried up bodies of waters, valleys, and rivers. Scientists speculate that millions of years ago, Mars contained lakes and other large bodies of liquid, but over time the water has disappeared, perhaps flowing down beneath the planet's surface through the numerous cracks.

The latest photos of flowing water presents theories that living organisms are able to survive in Mars' underground flowing waters, living in darkness under the planet's surface. There are examples of such organisms on Earth, and it may also hold true on Mars.

The water shows up as dark-colored, finger-like streaks flowing down from various slopes and crevices. Based on seasonal photos, the water patterns appear to grow or recede depending on the season. Scientists hypothesize that the briny water could appear and disappear based on the winter or summer months on the Red Planet.

"We expect water on Mars to be briny, to be salty, because we know that the surface is salty from all of the past landers and rovers. ... Furthermore, the salt serves to depress the freezing point of the water, so in places where it's below freezing, we see this activity, it is still plausible for that to be salty water," said Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona.

The theory of Mars holding briny salty water is connected to its freezing point. The more salt water contains, the lower the freezing temperature. Based on McEwen's observations, the apparent unfrozen flowing waters were spotted on steeper slopes as it descends at warmer seasonal months. Water streaks on Mars are thought to be hundreds of years old.

Evidence from Mar's flowing waters could bring stronger speculations of life outside of planet Earth. Click "START" to see other planets and moons that have the potential to support alien life.


http://sanfrancisco.ibtimes.com/arti...alien-life.htm

[American Patriot]

Mars rover reaches rim of vast, ancient crater

• 10 August 2011 by David Shiga
• For similar stories, visit the Exploring Mars Topic Guide

THREE years of trundling across treacherous dunes has brought NASA's Opportunity rover to its most significant target yet - a huge crater called Endeavour that was once soaked with water and could hold clues as to whether there was ever life on Mars.
Orbital observations suggest the rocks on Endeavour's rim are more than 3.5 billion years old and so date from the earliest, wettest phase of Martian history, when water carved out vast drainage channels across the planet. Until now, neither Opportunity nor its now-defunct sister Spirit (see "The rovers at a glance") had examined rocks that clearly date from this period.
"This is potentially the most exciting scientific opportunity for the rover mission yet," says John Callas, mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. That's because mineralogical studies from orbit suggest these ancient rocks formed in a cosy environment for life.
The rovers have previously studied rocks that were once immersed in acidic, salty water (see "Blueberry bonanza"). The 20-kilometre Endeavour, by contrast, seems to have harboured water friendlier to life, since the crater contains clay minerals that require a relatively neutral pH to form. What's more, orbital measurements do not indicate that the ancient water was salty - though salty water may be flowing on Mars today (see "Dark streaks point to salty flows").
Opportunity's arrival at Endeavour marks a huge milestone for the mission. The goal seemed "almost unbelievably audacious" when it started heading there, says James Wray of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
The rover was only designed to last three months and in 2008, when it set out from a smaller crater called Victoria, it had already been on Mars for more than four years (see its route here). "I have gained a wife, lost a grandfather and moved twice [since then]," Wray says. "From that perspective, it does feel like a lot of time has passed."
The rover might reveal what form the water at Endeavour took. If it finds rocks bearing the imprint of ripples, that would suggest that water pooled on the surface, while if it spots rocks threaded with veins of clay minerals, that would point to water percolating underground, Wray says.
Opportunity entered Victoria crater but is likely to spend all its time at Endeavour on the rim. Endeavour's interior is less enticing because sediment from a later, drier period of Martian history has buried the old rocks there.
If it is still functioning a few years from now, the rover could set off for another, smaller crater called Iazu, with rocks that are just as old. "But holy smoly, that's like 15 kilometres away," nearly as far as the three-year trek to Endeavour, says Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. He is content to see Opportunity live out the rest of its days scrutinising rocks and capturing eye-popping vistas on Endeavour's rim. "That's a spectacular way to end the mission," he says.
Blueberry bonanza

Almost immediately after it landed in 2004 in a region of Mars called Meridiani Planum, Opportunity made a watershed discovery: rocks at its landing site had formed in ancient lakes.
The evidence came in part from tiny "blueberries" (see image) made of haematite, which almost always forms in water. Curved lines of sediment pointed to the sweeping motion of a water current, while sulphate salts and the mineral jarosite, which forms in dilute sulphuric acid on Earth, suggested that the water was briny and acidic.

Dark streaks point to salty flows

Mars's image as a dust bowl may need a makeover. Dark streaks seen forming in summer and fading in winter might be signs of water flowing just beneath the surface (see image).
The appearance of streaks on sloping ground, including light streaks seen by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, has been attributed to present-day liquid water. But the link is not watertight - avalanches of dust could also be to blame.
Now, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has revealed a previously unknown group of seasonal dark streaks in Mars's southern hemisphere that may be caused by flowing water. Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, Tucson, and colleagues found slopes where dark streaks appear every spring and disappear each winter (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1204816).
The seasonal streaks, which the team call recurring slope lineae, show no preference for dusty areas, where dust avalanches would be more likely. They are, however, found where radar observations show evidence for underground glaciers.
One possibility is that they result from meltwater that drains down slopes when ice thaws in the spring. But the researchers believe any flowing water lies below the surface - if it were above, MRO probably would have spotted its spectral signature, they say.
Some of the streaks form at -23 °C, well below the freezing point of pure water. Salty water, however, can remain liquid at such temperatures, and if it is flowing just beneath the surface, it might shift dust grains above, causing the dark streaks. "The best explanation we have for these observations so far is flow of briny water, although this study does not prove that," says McEwen.
The discovery of what might be liquid water on present-day Mars raises the possibility that life may have a toehold there. "It is our first chance to see an environment on Mars that might allow for the expression of an active biological process," says Lisa Pratt of Indiana University in Bloomington.

[American Patriot]

Russia and Europe to Send Man to Mars?

Analysis by Ian O'Neill
Thu Aug 18, 2011 03:22 AM ET

It's usually the assumption that the first man or woman to first set foot on Martian dirt will be American. After all, the only men to walk on the lunar surface were employed by NASA.
This assumption could be turned on its head if a recent announcement by the head of the European Space Agency (ESA) follows through.
RELATED: To Make Mankind Great Again, Push to Mars
Speaking to reporters at an air show near Moscow on Wednesday, Jean-Jacques Dordain said ESA and Roskosmos (the Russian space agency) would "carry out the first flight to Mars together," according to RIA Novosti.

WATCH VIDEO: New concepts for Mars-probing rovers would use Martian wind to move around the planet.

Naturally, there's no promise of a target date, but Dordain's announcement underscores an important fact: to get humanity to Mars, international collaboration will be desirable. Perhaps even essential.
Interestingly, one of the key deciding factors for the joint ESA/Roscosmos proposition appears to be the Russian Mars500 project. Mars500 is a 520-day simulated "mission" to the Red Planet being run by Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems. ESA is also involved in the project.
SEE ALSO: 'Mars Mission' Crew to Spend 520 Days in Isolation
In November, the crew of Mars500 are set to be released from confinement when they "return to Earth." The crew of six men (controversially, no women were selected to participate) are currently enduring the confines of a 550-cubic-meter (19,400-cubic-foot) mock spaceship, studying the physiological and psychological impact of an 18 month return trip to Mars.
As I discussed in a recent Discovery News article (read "To Make Mankind Great Again, Push to Mars"), a huge amount of energy is being directed into planning for mankind's "next great step," but politics and money all-too-often gets in the way of any real progress being made.
Perhaps ESA and Roscosmos can sidestep the worst financial issues by combining resources and setting their international sights on Mars. After all, landing a human on an alien world should be an international effort, but whether or not this happens remains to be seen.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Doug Ellison

[American Patriot]

Russia and Europe plan a manned mission to Mars


Tags: Roscosmos, Russia, Mars, World, Society, European Space Agency, Commentary

Mikhail Aristov

Aug 18, 2011 16:52 Moscow Time

Mars. Photo: EPA

Europe will carry out the first manned mission to Mars together with Russia. Head of the European Space Agency Jean-Jacques Dordain stated this when he visited the International Aviation and Space Salon, MAKS-2011, now under way in Zhukovsky near Moscow. He gave no timeframe, but head of the Russian Space Agency Vladimir Popovkin welcomed his European counterpart’s idea concerning the coordination of the future project.
The dream of human beings going to Mars has a long history, and at present, mankind is very close to implement such a project. Some time ago, an interest in the planet was linked to the possibility of encountering with humanoids. Later, it became clear that the probability of such a meeting is almost zero, although some kind of life could be found there. The significance of a manned mission to Mars is beyond the search for extraterrestrial life. According to scientists, Mars is the only promising planet in the Solar System from the standpoint of colonization. Perhaps, this may be the reason why the U.S. has declared a manned mission to Mars a national programme.
However, over 50-year experience in space exploration shows that coordinated efforts in this area provide better results than competition. At the same time, it’s no easy task to achieve mutual understanding in all areas, says analyst of the Moscow-based journal “Novosti Kosmonavtike” or “News of Cosmonautics” Igor Lisov:
“Space exploration history teaches us that even assurance given by the U.S. President is insufficient to implement a space programme linked to complicated targets. For example, only one out of the three attempts to fly to the moon was realized. Similarly, the decision of the space agencies and their agreement on a manned mission could not be implemented without the support of the leaders of the countries, in this case, Russia and the European states. Organization of such a mission is the government’s task. In the future, it will be intergovernmental work,” says Igor Lisov.
In fact, there is an intergovernmental decision to this end. In 2006, the member states of the European Space Agency, adopted a large-scale project to launch the “EkzoMars” rover in which Russia will be directly involved. The rover will be launched by the Russian-built Proton rocket in 2013 and it will be partially supplied with Russian equipment. However, the launch of a manned mission to Mars depends on the leaders of Russia and the member states of the ESA, says Igor Lisov.
“If they decide to implement an emergency programme, the mission may be carried out in ten years. If it is an ordinary one, then it will take 20 years. This is a long period of time,” Igor Lisov said.
Meanwhile, Russia is coordinating closely with the European Space agency in carrying out the Mars-500 experiment. This is the third, 520-day stage of the experiment. The experiment simulates a manned flight to Mars at a facility located in Moscow. During the ongoing experiment the crew stepped on to the simulated Mars surface several times.

[American Patriot]

Article:
The Dirt on Mars' Soil: More Suitable for Life Than Thought


Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer
Date: 23 August 2011 Time: 11:27 AM ET

This image shows NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander’s solar panel and the lander’s Robotic Arm with a sample in the scoop on June 10, 2008. The image was taken just before the sample was delivered to the Optical Microscope. This view is a part of the "mission success" panorama that will show the whole landing site in color. CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University

The soil on Mars may be more capable of supporting life than previously thought, a new study suggests.
Researchers have long suspected that the Martian surface is packed full of oxidizing compounds, which could make it difficult for complex molecules like organic chemicals — the building blocks of life as we know it — to exist. But the new study, which analyzed data gathered by NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander, suggests that's not the case.
"Although there may be some small amounts of oxidants in the soil, the bulk material is actually quite benign," said lead study author Richard Quinn of NASA's Ames Research Center and the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, Calif. "It's very similar to moderate soils that we find on Earth."


Digging in the Martian dirt
Astrobiologists have long been interested in characterizing soils on Mars, to help determine whether life could ever have gotten a foothold on the Red Planet. [5 Bold Claims of Alien Life ]
NASA's $420 million Phoenix mission has given them a lot to ponder in this regard. The Phoenix lander touched down near the Martian north pole in late May 2008, then gathered a variety of observations for the next five months.
Phoenix is most famous for confirming the existence of water ice on Mars, but it also made a lot of interesting soil measurements. One of those was the Mars dirt's acidity, or pH, level.
"People really didn't know what the pH was going to be," Quinn told SPACE.com. "A lot of people believed that the soils would be very acidic."
But just a month or so into its mission, Phoenix found that the dirt at its landing site was mildly basic, with a pH around 7.7. The lander also detected several chemicals that could serve as nutrients for life-forms, including magnesium, potassium and chloride.
These discoveries intrigued scientists, suggesting that Martian soil is perhaps more hospitable to microbial life than they had thought. And the new results provide further evidence along those lines.
Stable soil chemistry?
Phoenix made the pH and various other discoveries using its onboard wet chemistry laboratory (WCL). The lander scooped Martian dirt into cups of water brought from Earth, and the WCL instrument analyzed the resulting solution. [Infographic: Mars Landers and Rovers Since 1971]
Quinn and his colleagues studied the Phoenix data from 2008, focusing this time on measurements of Martian soils' oxidation-reduction potential. Oxidation refers to the stripping away of electrons. It's a destructive process that can tear up complex molecules like DNA, which is why people need antioxidants as part of a balanced diet.
Scientists had reason to think that Martian soil might be highly oxidizing, Quinn said. In the mid-1970s, for example, NASA's Viking landers mixed some organic compounds into Martian dirt, and the chemicals appeared to decompose.
And Phoenix itself detected a molecule called perchlorate, which under some conditions is a strong oxidizer. But the new results, reported last month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, paint a rosier picture of Red Planet soil as far as habitability is concerned.
"When you look at the composite of all the material in there, and you measure the overall reactivity of that soil in solution, it's comparable to what you would find in terrestrial soils, Earth soils," Quinn said. "So it's not an extreme environment in that regard."
The results don't prove that Martian life exists or ever has existed. However, they and other recent finds — including evidence from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that liquid water may have flowed just beneath the Martian surface in the last year or so — are making scientists more and more hopeful.
"The evidence from the HiRISE team that there may be seasonal water flow at some locations, combined with this measurement that shows that when the soil is wetted it's actually not harsh conditions — it's very positive in terms of the potential for life to get a foothold," Quinn said.
This story was provided by SPACE.com, sister site to LiveScience.com. You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

• Photos: The Search for Water on Mars
• Theories on the Origin of Life
• FAQ: What the Possibility of Water on Mars Means

[Backstop]

I'm fascinated by space esploration, but gotta admit it's a low priority for reading.

Anyway - looking at that pic, the light levels on Mars look about the same as earth. Is that true, or did they use some kinda filter, light, etc. to record the pic within a spectrum we can see?

[Ryan Ruck]

Rover Spots The 'New Thing' On Mars

November 4, 2011


A close-up from NASA's Opportunity rover shows the line of light-colored rocks known as "Homestake" or "The Vein." Components of Opportunity's robotic arm are visible in the left foreground.

NASA's Opportunity rover has come across a light-colored line of rocks that could serve as solid evidence for Mars' watery past — and help set the stage for the next Mars mission, due for launch this month.

The formation, nicknamed "Homestake" or "The Vein," showed up in pictures that the rover sent back from the rim of Endeavour Crater early this week. It looks like a few paving bricks, sticking edge up from the surrounding soil. Not all that impressive, but it caught the attention of the rover science team as well as the amateur observers who are following Oppy's every move.


This stereo view from NASA's Opportunity rover shows the view looking out past Cape York to Endeavour Crater. Use red-blue glasses to see the 3-D effect.

Cornell astronomer Steve Squyres, the principal investigator for the Opportunity and Spirit rover missions, told the Planetary Society's A.J.S. Rayl that he and his colleagues have been keeping an eye on similar light-colored veins of rock for months during Opportunity's dash to the crater rim. Squyres said tracing the veins to find Homestake was a "real triumph of geology."

"These are different from anything we've ever seen with either rover, a completely new thing on Mars, never seen anywhere," Squyres said. "And we're pretty charged up about it."

Stuart Atkinson, a British educator, author and amateur astronomer who has been working up wonderful imagery from the rover missions for years, produced more than a dozen pictures over the past few days documenting Opportunity's surroundings, and particularly what's happening with Homestake. The rover has already been taking a close look at the formation with its microscopic imager.


Opportunity's microscopic imager looks at the Homestake rock formation and its surroundings in detail.

So what is it? Squyres isn't willing to "hazard a guess" yet, but the speculation is that the rock could point the way to minerals that are linked to Mars' wetter, warmer past. Five years ago, the now-defunct Spirit rover churned up light-colored, silica-rich dirt that had to have been formed in the presence of water.

The Opportunity team has also been looking for phyllosilicates, clay minerals that have already been detected through orbital observations. Such minerals are an important clue to Mars' geological history, since they form in water that's not as acidic as the water that gave rise to Spirit's silica. A less acidic environment would be more hospitable to life.

It may be too early to say what Homestake is, but based on the buzz, it's likely to be something interesting.

More buzz will be stirred up in the weeks to come over the Curiosity rover's upcoming $2.5 billion mission to Mars. The car-sized rover, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, is due to be launched on Nov. 25 with Mars' Gale Crater as its objective.

Gale Crater should be a candy store for geologists, because it boasts a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mound of phyllosilicates and sulfates. The composition of the soil at different elevations could help scientists document a billion years of geological and climate history. It could even point to particular eras when Mars was actually habitable by life as we know it. And if those conditions still exist underground ... well, that would be a vein of pure gold for astrobiologists.

By the time Curiosity touches down on the Martian surface next summer, Squyres and his colleagues may well have unraveled Homestake's secrets, and the lessons learned from one rover mission will carry over to the next. Stay tuned...

[American Patriot]

Omg call hoagland! We have a manmade thingie!

[American Patriot]

(MOSCOW) — A Russian space probe aiming to land on a Mars moon was stuck circling the Earth after equipment failure Wednesday, and scientists raced to fire up its engines before the whole thing came crashing down.
One U.S. space expert said the craft could become the most dangerous manmade object ever to hit the planet.(See more on Russia's Gagarin golden anniversary.)


The unmanned Phobos-Ground craft was successfully launched by a Zenit-2 booster rocket just after midnight Moscow time Wednesday (2016 GMT Tuesday) from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It separated from the booster about 11 minutes later and was to fire its engines twice to set out on its path to the Red Planet, but never did.



Russia's Federal Space Agency chief Vladimir Popovkin said neither of the two engine burns worked, probably due to the failure of the craft's orientation system. He said space engineers have three days to reset the spacecraft's computer program to make it work before its batteries die.



The mishap is the latest in a series of recent launch failures that have raised concerns about the condition of Russia's space industries. The Russian space agency said it will establish its own quality inspection teams at rocket factories to tighten oversight over production quality.



The $170 million Phobos-Ground was Russia's first interplanetary mission since a botched 1996 robotic mission to Mars, which failed when the probe crashed shortly after the launch due to an engine failure. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, and the latest spacecraft aimed to take ground samples on Phobos.



James Oberg, a NASA veteran who now works as a space consultant, said it's still possible to regain control over the Russia space probe.(See more on the U.S. and future space flight.)


"With several days of battery power, and with the probe's orbit slowly twisting out of the optimal alignment with the desired path towards Mars, the race is on to regain control, diagnose the potential computer code flaws, and send up emergency rocket engine control commands," Oberg said in an email to The Associated Press. "Depending on the actual root of the failure, this is not an impossible challenge."



He warned, however, that the effort to restore control over the probe is hampered by a limited earth-to-space communications network that already forced Russian flight controllers to ask the general public in South America to help find the craft. Amateur astronomers were the first to spot the trouble when they detected that the spacecraft was stuck in an Earth orbit.



If the controllers fail to bring the Phobos-Ground back to life, the tons of highly toxic fuel it carries would turn it into the most dangerous manmade object ever to fall from orbit, Oberg warned.



"About seven tons of nitrogen teroxide and hydrazine, which could freeze before ultimately entering, will make it the most toxic falling satellite ever," he said. "What was billed as the heaviest interplanetary probe ever may become one of the heaviest space derelicts to ever fall back to Earth out of control, an unenviable record."



The spacecraft is 13.2 metric tons (14.6 tons), with fuel accounting for a large share of its weight. It was manufactured by the Moscow-based NPO Lavochkin, which has specialized in interplanetary vehicles since the dawn of the space era.



The company also designed the craft for Russia's botched 1996 launch and the two probes sent to Phobos in 1988 also failed. One was lost a few months after the launch due to an operator's mistake, and contact was lost with its twin when it was orbiting Mars.



In contrast with the failures that dogged Soviet and Russian efforts to explore Mars, a succession of NASA's landers and rovers, including Spirit and Opportunity, have successfully studied the Red Planet.



If Russian space experts manage to fix the Phobos-Ground, it will reach Mars orbit in September 2012 and land on Phobos in February 2013. The return vehicle is expected to carry up to 200 grams (7 ounces) of ground samples from Phobos back to Earth in August 2014.



It is arguably the most challenging unmanned interplanetary mission ever. It would require a long series of precision maneuvering for the probe to reach the potato-shaped moon measuring just about 20 kilometers (just over 12 miles) in diameter, land on its cratered surface, scrape it for samples and fly back.



Scientists had hoped that studies of Phobos' surface could help solve the mystery of its origin and shed more light on the genesis of the solar system. Some believe the crater-dented moon is an asteroid captured by Mars' gravity, while others think it's a piece of debris from when Mars collided with another celestial object.



Popovkin admitted the mission was risky and its failure would badly dent Russia's space prestige, but added it was essential to preserve the nation's technological expertise in robotic missions.



China has contributed to the mission by adding a mini-satellite that is to be released when the craft enters an orbit around Mars on its way to Phobos. The 115-kilogram (250-pound) satellite, Yinghuo-1, will become the first Chinese spacecraft to explore Mars, studying the planet during two years in orbit.

[American Patriot]

Russian space agency battles to save Mars probe

Phobos-Grunt probe designed to collect samples from a moon of Mars becomes stuck in orbit after booster rockets fail to fire

• 
  Russia launches its Phobos-Grunt Mars probe Link to this video The Russian space agency is battling to save a faulty Mars probe that became stuck in Earth's orbit after booster rockets failed to fire shortly after launch.
  Engineers have three days to regain control of the $163m Phobos-Grunt probe that was designed to collect rock and soil samples from Mars's moon, Phobos, and return them to Earth for scientific study.
  The spacecraft launched from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan reached Earth's orbit, but failed to find its bearings by the stars, a procedure it must perform before the onboard computer tells the engines to boost the probe on to Mars.
  The spacecraft's batteries will last for three days, giving Russian officials a brief window in which to communicate with the stricken spacecraft and attempt to send it back on course.
  Failure to rescue the probe will be a major blow to the Russian space agency and the latest in a long line of missions that have gone awry en route to the red planet. Moscow faces the further headache of an expensive, fuel-laden lump of space junk that will at some point fall back to Earth.
  "The engine did not fire. Neither the first nor the second burn occurred," the Russian space agency chief, Vladimir Popovkin, told state television. "This means that the craft was unable to find its bearings by the stars."
  The malfunction was met with dismay by mission scientists who hoped to overcome a dismal record that has seen all of the agency's 16 Mars probes fail either fully or partially since the 1960s.
  Even before the launch, Popovkin warned that the mission, the nation's most ambitious in years, was risky because the probe was built with 90% unproven technology. Others blamed tight budget constraints and a brain drain from the agency following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 for the failure.
  "They say there is hope to reset it. Apparently it's a problem with the programming, but there is very little time," Alexander Zakharov, the lead mission scientist at the Space Research Institute, told Reuters.
  "I feel grief. It's very sad that this is how it all worked out, but this is a consequence of our lack of people after such a big interval. Many young people worked on this. There is a lack of experience. We are working almost from scratch," he added.
  The mission to bring back a sample of soil, or "grunt" in Russian, from the 17-mile-wide Martian moon was supposed to assert Russia's place at the forefront of space exploration.
  Should the mission be salvaged, the Russians aim to select a landing spot on Phobos using maps created by the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter.
  The probe would touch down on the Martian moon in February 2013 and use a robotic arm to collect and analyse the soil.
  Some rock and soil would be transferred to a small return capsule aboard the Phobos-Grunt probe and blasted back to Earth within a few days of landing. The capsule should arrive home in August 2014.
  Scientists hope that studying the soil from the potato-shaped Phobos will reveal how the moon formed and whether it contains large cracks and fissures that would explain its unusually low density.
  Hitching a ride on the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft is China's first interplanetary probe, the tiny 115kg Yinghuo-1, which is due to work alongside Phobos-Grunt to study the Martian atmosphere.
  The US space advocacy group the Planetary Society has used the Russian mission to carry its Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE) that will investigate whether plant seeds, hardy bacteria and tough little creatures called tardigrades, or water-bears, can survive the extreme conditions of spaceflight and so support theories on how life might spread through the cosmos.
  Moscow's last successful missions beyond Earth's orbit, Vega 1 and 2, visited Venus and Halley's Comet in the mid-1980s. Russia continues to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station, but a series of failed unmanned launches this year has underscored the fragility of its space programme.
  Mars, the spacecraft graveyard
  
  • 2011 Russian Phobos-Grunt probe gets stuck in Earth's orbit, leaving engineers three days to rescue the mission.
  • 2003 Britain's Beagle 2 Mars lander falls silent during touchdown on the red planet.
  • 2003 Nasa's twin Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, explore the surface of the planet for years. Spirit died in 2010. Opportunity continues work to this day.
  •1999 Nasa's Mars Polar Lander crashes into the planet, probably after an engine malfunciton failed to slow the spacecraft's descent.
  • 1988 Nasa's Mars Climate Orbiter disintegrates in the Martian atmosphere after a mixup over metric and imperial units for thrust.
  • 1996 The Russian Mars 96 mission is torn apart in Earth's atmosphere when a rocket booster propels the probe back to Earth.
  • 1996 Nasa's Pathfinder probe lands on Mars and explores the surface with a wheeled rover called Sojourner. The mission lasts three months.
  •1992 Nasa's Mars Observer is lost as it approaches the planet after a suspected fuel explosion.
  • 1988 Two Russian spacecraft bound for the Martian moon of Phobos suffer critical failures, though one returns photos of Mars.
  • 1973 A Russian mission to fly by and land on Mars achieves only the former as the probe flies straight past the planet.