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In a break from standard practice, U.S. military has removed the links to its tracking data of Phobos-Grunt.

Could the Russians be right!? In a break from standard practice, U.S. military has removed the links to its tracking data of Phobos-Grunt.

On Jan. 12, the Space Track website originally published information on the estimated re-entry track for Phobos-Grunt, a Russian probe that malfunctioned shortly after its November 2011 launch and was stuck in low-Earth orbit for more than two months.

After routine updates and revised estimates over the course of the next two days, the military removed links to these re-entry predictions and did not publish final confirmation data on the spacecraft’s fall on Jan. 15, according to Aviation Week.

A careful analysis of recent activities by U.S. radar show that it could not have affected Phobos-Grunt. Yet, the U.S. military has now taken actions that not only break with standard procedures, they draw attention to the issue. All very astonishing.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

3 comments

  • Simon Mytton

    I’m getting this when I try accessing this link:-

    Forbidden

    You don’t have permission to access /seesat/Jan-2012/0240.html on this server.

  • James

    That Seesat link seems to work now.

    I don’t know about the TIPS reports but looking at the Spacetrack data for the Phobos Grunt spacecraft shows the last TLE data in the database for object 37872 (11065A) is date/time 12015.69171186 (fifteenth day of 2012, 16 hours UTC, 36 minutes).

  • James Fincannon

    I observe on Space-track.org on 1/24/2012 the TIP report for Object 37872, PHOBOS-GRUNT:
    Report Date/Time 2012-01-15 17:53:00 GMT
    Predicted Decay Time 2012-01-15 17:46:00 GMT +/- 1 Minutes
    Predicted Decay Location 46° S, 273° E
    Final Report

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