La série noire continue pour #Roscosmos
Russian gecko satellite unresponsive in transit orbit — RT News
▻http://rt.com/news/175200-foton-satellite-unresponsive-orbit
The Russian space agency Roscosmos is struggling to re-establish contact with the Foton-M satellite, launched last Saturday. The spacecraft is not responding to commands from the ground, probably indicating mission failure.
The satellite is currently in low-earth orbit and broadcasting a telemetry signal, but it’s not responding to orders from mission control. This has already prevented the firing of the spacecraft’s engine as planned, which would bring it to a higher and permanent orbit.
The engineers on the ground say they are not time-constrained in bringing the unruly satellite under control.
“Results of the analysis show that the service systems of the spacecraft are functioning in full concordance with the control system logic. The design and the instrumentation allow for a prolonged autonomous functioning of the spacecraft,” a spokesperson for Progress, the builder of the satellite, told Itar-Tass.
Foton-M was scheduled to be lifted to a higher orbit on Wednesday, according to mission control. Communication problems emerged shortly post launch, after it had circled earth several times.
Hope remains that the mission can still be salvaged. The previous stage of the flight, which involved rebooting the satellite’s systems and beginning some of its scientific experiments have been carried out as planned.
(…)
Among them are containers with living organisms, including five geckos, fruit flies and fungi, which are supposed to be jettisoned after two months in orbit and land in Russia. There is no update on the status of the living cargo, since the containers are not designed to broadcast any telemetry while in space.
