Russia has released findings of a report that allegedly explains the loss of the Phobos-Grunt Mars probe. It blames “space radiation” that caused a malfunction in the onboard computers:
“The most likely reason, in the opinion of the commission, was the local impact of heavily charged space particles that led to a failure in the memory of the main onboard computer in the second stage of flight,” Popovkin told Russian news agencies in Voronezh, a town 450 km (280 miles) south of Moscow.
A burst of space radiation caused the onboard computers to reboot and go into standby mode, he said.
So I guess HAARP is off the hook, but uhm, why would a craft designed to go into space be so vulnerable to space radiation, especially before it had really gotten into space? Furriners, of course:
Popovkin said foreign-made counterfeit or defective microchips were partly to blame for the failure of the $165-million (104 million pound) spacecraft, designed to retrieve soil samples from the Martian moon Phobos.
The accounts I read did not identify the source of foreign parts, but counterfeit parts from China are are serious problem, one that has bedeviled the US military.
And Russia’s too:
And it’s not just the United States. Russian aviation officials were alarmed when, upon inspecting 60,000 aircraft parts, they found that nearly a third of them were counterfeits. While most of the substandard fake parts came from neighboring countries, many were made in Russia. While China wins first place when it comes to stealing technology and producing counterfeit goods, Russia is solidly in second place, turning out about a third as many counterfeit goods as China. Russia’s neighbors, many former parts of the Soviet Union, have the same bad habits. But Russia and China together produce about 80 percent of counterfeits.
Western nations would like to get both Russia and China to crack down on the counterfeiting. That has not been easy. In both countries, the counterfeiting is a multi-billion dollar a year industry, run by guys who know how to bribe the right politicians. The counterfeiters have another incentive to keep the prosecutors at bay; counterfeiting kills. Phony medicines and aircraft engine parts have both been linked to deaths in Africa and Asia, where the imitation goods are often sold. If brought to justice, Chinese and Russian counterfeiters would likely be executed..
Though note those last bits: Russian counterfeits are a problem, even for Russians.
So although it is at least plausible that bad chips were responsible for the loss of PG (a) it is not necessarily true that foreigners are responsible, (b) it still does not reflect well on the Russian space agency that it would not adequately test parts, and (c) some experts–including Russian ones–are not buying it. From the Reuters article linked above:
Experts said Moscow was blaming external factors for the loss of its ambitious Mars mission to distract from chronic failings with its once-pioneering industry.
“You can fantasize about everything. This is one of a number of possible reasons but one that is convenient for many people,” Alexander Zakharov, the mission’s lead scientist, told Reuters.
“Even if this was the true reason, which we can’t completely rule out because it does happen, then there is some kind of problem with the flight system or the programming, which were not designed to guard against this (space radiation).”
State RIA news agency cited an industry source as saying it was “simply absurd” that Phobos-Grunt had not been made to withstand cosmic rays on its two-year interplanetary mission.
“They did not make a vacuum cleaner but a spacecraft that is intended to fly in the aggressive environment of outer space. They couldn’t have failed to take this into account,” the source said.
Another space industry source said potentially damaging bursts of radiation were highly unlikely in low-Earth orbit, where hundreds of satellites circle within the protective bubble of the planet’s magnetic field.
“This usually happens with interplanetary satellites around Mars or Venus, in other words, in deep space,” the source told RIA. “This phenomenon occurs every one or two years on average, but it is very unlikely to see it in low-Earth orbit.”
So, the mystery remains. It is no mystery, however, that the efforts to deflect blame to foreigners will continue.
Dmitri Rogozin is not mentioned in the Reuters article, although he was earlier identified as being tasked with leading the investigation. But that’s not to say that he has been out of the limelight. Hardly.
First, he penned an over the top defense of Putin that brought to many minds Soviet-style effusive praise of the Party leadership and demonization of the opposition:
A staunchly pro-government newspaper published a warning Wednesday that Russia faces ruin if Vladimir Putin is not returned to the presidency next month, but critics said the lengthy article recalled the old Soviet Union and contained vitriol so extreme that it appeared probable to backfire.
The 1,900-word piece, full of flamboyant belligerence and fawning praise for Putin, was published on the front page of the Kremlin’s most loyal newspaper, Izvestia. In fits of Soviet-style language, it raised the level of hostility toward the United States and toward Putin’s domestic opponents to new heights.
It pronounces, melodramatically, that “Putin is the only leader left in Europe not to be crushed down by U.S. hegemony.” And it warns that Russia will be ruined by its enemies if he is not elected president on March 4. Putin, 59, served as president from 2000 to 2008, then stepped aside because of term limits and became prime minister.
The author of the Izvestia article was Dmitry Rogozin, until recently the Russian ambassador to NATO and now a deputy prime minister in charge of armaments. His piece appears to be an aggressive attempt to protect Putin’s nationalist flank, at a time when most of the nationalist movement has turned its back on Putin and joined liberals in protests.
But the language is so intemperate, said Stanislav Belkovsky, president of the Institute for National Strategy here, that “it sounds ridiculous.”
Rogozin ridiculous? My faith in humanity is shattered! Actually, Rogozin the Ridiculous sounds like the perfect sobriquet, especially given his other foray into the news today. Namely, his call for ensuring that Sov I mean Russian youth has good Russian military toys to play with, rather than evil Western toys (pahoben caught this too):
Russian boys should play with Russian toys, not guns and battle tanks fashioned after Western models, the cabinet minister in charge of Russia’s defense industry said.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin took some time out from his oversight of the production of real weapons, turning to toy arms in comments on Twitter.
“Our children have played with Leopards enough,” he said on his Twitter account, referring to a German-made tank first introduced in the Cold War era.
“I have given a command to think about the production of toy models of Russian weapons and military equipment,” said Rogozin, a former nationalist political party leader who until recently was Russia’s envoy to NATO.
“A command to think about.” Gotta love it. Also have to love the kinds of pressing issues that Deputy Prime Ministers feel deserve their attention.
And of course, it is much more important that the government focus on getting good Russian tank toys in the hands of its youth, than reliable computer chips in its spacecraft.
