Reading this, it would have been shocking if it had been a success. And yet Congress is determined to keep us dependent on the Russians indefinitely.
12 thoughts on “Why Phobos-Grunt Failed”
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Reading this, it would have been shocking if it had been a success. And yet Congress is determined to keep us dependent on the Russians indefinitely.
Comments are closed.
To save cost, the Phobos-Grunt project had no dedicated prototype of the spacecraft for electric and radio tests, unofficial sources said. As a result, all testing of electric systems had to be conducted on the so-called “complex stand.” However the facility featured only a limited number of onboard systems, with most components represented by mockups and prototypes. According to critics, it was not nearly enough for adequate development of a brand-new spacecraft. Moreover, as most components were still undergoing considerable upgrades, their prototypes on the test stand often did not reflect their actual performance. As a result, the final phases of testing and upgrades had to be conducted on the actual components of the flight vehicle, thus delaying the scheduled start of integrated tests of the fully assembled flight vehicle.
Moreover, blueprints for some components of the flight hardware started coming to the production arm of NPO Lavochkin only in December 2010. Even this documentation would have to be changed in parallel with hectic production efforts. As a result, the manfacturing and welding of some elements dragged until summer. Especially, many problems were reported with Kaluga’s branch of NPO Lavochkin, which was responsible for solar panels of the cruise stage, PM.
Like they used to say, “Faster, Better, Cheaper – pick any two.”
That schedule was very “success oriented”. Unfortunately, they were not succcessful. Every schedule should plan for success, but one that doesn’t allow for failure (the old “failure is not an option”) will have problems. You can optimize schedule, cost, or performance. At best, pick 2. For spacecraft, optimizing schedule is usually your worst mistake.
As for the prototype issue, last I reviewed CEV, they were running into the same problems of saving costs by removing a dedicated test platform. I don’t know if things changed with the MPCV.
Rand,
[[[And yet Congress is determined to keep us dependent on the Russians indefinitely.]]]
Ahh, the usual Red Herring. The difference is that the Soyuz has been flying for decades.
However, if you are worry about dependence on Soyuz you might also want to worry about some of the Russia modules on ISS lasting until 2020. If I recall there are a couple that are pretty critical to the habitability of the ISS.
“Ahh, the usual Red Herring. The difference is that the Soyuz has been flying for decades.”
The current Soyuz is the so-called “digital” version, which has been flying about a year. The Russians don’t even fully trust it yet, which is why they declined the opportunity to do the photo fly about of ISS earlier this year. It still has problems, from what I have been told.
huh? They did it. We watched it live.
The Russians declined the first photo fly-around, but agreed to do another one on a later mission. I’m fairly certain the first one was less about the concern of the true reliability and more about the politics of the US/NASA deciding whether a Soyuz fly-around was safe enough, deciding it was, and then telling Russia to do it.
MfK,
The Shuttles got similar digital make overs (glass cockpits) about a decade ago and folks kept insisting they were 30 year old relics that needed to be put out to pasture. And how about all the 50 year old B-52’s flying with new electronics? The basic design is still proven to be reliable which is key.
That read like a total project management failure at a mind boggling number of levels. I’d guess the first and fatal mistake was trying to hit a Mars launch window that required a schedule that their facilities, procedures, and personnel didn’t have a prayer of making, and nobody was brave enough to wave a red flag and call a halt to the charade.
A few weeks ago the Russian president called for investigations into their recent launch failures, threatening criminal prosecution of the managers. If that’s the kind of political pressure being applied, it’s no wonder none of the lower managers were brave enough to stand on the train tracks.
Ironically, I was having a discussion with a former NASA person this morning — prior to my reading this article — who told me that NASA, amazingly enough, often launches planetary probes without landing software installed. They know they have enough time to write, IV&V, and upload it. So that practice may not be as screwy as it sounds — provided one has a very-high fidelity replica on the ground for HITL testing.
JPL perfected reprogramming deep space probes with the Voyager missions. Compared to today’s probes, Voyager had relative small memories so it wasn’t practical or perhaps even possible to delay the launches until every piece of code was finished. Since the missions were many years long, the wizards at JPL had plenty of time to perfect and upgrade the code. They even developed slick work-arounds for vehicle malfunctions and did some very smart programming* to improve image quality for the Uranus and Neptune encounters.
I wasn’t so concerned about all the software being in place, at least as long as they had the essential controls working. I was thinking about all the basic testing they didn’t do. They were finding incorrect wiring all over the place, after the satellite had been sent from Moscow where it allegedly passed all its inspections. So they were out in the field rewiring what the could and changing the software to adapt to the wiring they couldn’t correct. But did they even recheck all the wiring for errors?
No matter how good the programmers, they can’t write reliable code in transit if they don’t know what the inputs and outputs actually are. It all becomes a blind guess.
Judging by this list the USSR/Russians have attempted 21 missions to Mars. But they’ve only managed to complete all of their mission objectives 3 times. There about 4 other times they actually did manage to get something into Mars orbit only to have the lander crater on the surface. Only once have they actually succeeded in placing a lander on the surface of Mars. Looks like they should just stick to space stations.