The Russian space station on the night of November 9 unsuccessfully launched from the earth to Mars. According to the latest data, it was not possible to contact the automatic interplanetary station "Phobos-Grunt"
Russian measuring points tried to do this throughout the entire past night, but they did not succeed. French and American ground vehicles will try to remove telemetry from the station today. According to ITAR-TASS, Russian measuring points will be connected to this work in the evening. Meanwhile, a site run by US Strategic Command continues to warn that Phobos Grunt could hit Earth on November 26. Some media outlets, however, publish information that the station will not fall to Earth until December 3.
Skeptics were immediately found who saw mystical omens in this event. Two years ago they predicted the failure of this mission, said that "something is not allowed to Mars."
What happened, and why the station's engines did not turn on, without bringing it to the flight trajectory to Mars and leaving it in low-earth orbit, specialists are finding out.
Only since 1960, 21 attempts by earthlings to send their probes to Mars ended in failure. During this time, the Soviet Union and Russia lost 13 units, the Americans - 6, the Japanese - 1, another one - the Europeans. 18 missions were successful, i.e. almost 50/50. Oddly enough, but the development of other planets is not accompanied by such problems, the Red Planet alone does not allow earthlings to visit.
In 1989, the first attempt to launch spacecraft onto the surface of the Mars satellite, Phobos, failed. The first Soviet space station Phobos-1 immediately disappeared, and the second, Phobos-2, before disappearing, managed to transmit strange footage to Earth - a huge moving object in the shape of a spindle. For ufologists, this was one explanation - UFO. Everyone liked this version so much that all other unsuccessful attempts were attributed to the intrigues of aliens.
Then the American Mars Observer and our Mars-96 disappeared. For eight years, nothing has been launched to Mars. But recently, a partial solution to this mystery has emerged. Experts concluded that the moving spindle was the shadow of Phobos. The only thing left is why the Fobom-Grunt went out of order from the very beginning of the flight.
BTW
"Monolith" on Phobos: you will have to wait with a solution
The legendary astronaut Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin, the man who was the second to set foot on the lunar surface in 1969, regularly attracts attention to the strange object on Phobos. According to him, everyone who has seen the photo of "Monolith" has no doubt that it was put there. And this, of course, only reinforces suspicions of alien activity on Mars and in its vicinity.
Ufologists do not even doubt that the thing was left over from some aliens. But about its purpose they are lost in conjecture.
Promotional video:
"Monolith" on Phobos
The object was discovered back in 1998. It was found by researchers Efrain Palermo and Len Fleming in images (SPS252603 and SPS252603) transmitted by the Mars Global Surveyor probe. It was they who called the "Monolith" an object that looked like a slab, or a tower, or a dome about 76 meters high.
"Monolith" and its computer reconstruction (bottom left)
Unfortunately, even if the fate of Phobos-Grunt was successful, it would hardly be possible to count on the study of the mysterious object.
The Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences reported that it was the first time they heard about the "Monolith".
Here is what Alexander Bazilevsky, head of the Laboratory for Comparative Planetology and Meteorics of the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, said:
- "Monument" is located near Stickney crater, which means, far from the site of the proposed landing of "Phobos-Grunt". And thank God! We do not need stones at the landing site, especially large ones.
According to Irina Karachevtseva, an employee of the laboratory for the study of extraterrestrial territories of the Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography (MIIGAiK), the organization that made a detailed map of Phobos, the so-called "Monolith" is located on the "leading" side of Phobos (Leading site) with a longitude of 90 degrees. And she is out of the zone of possible landing sites.