The Phobos-Grunt is the russian interplanetary mission prepared with
a collaboration of institutes from Austria, Belarus, China, France,
Germany, Hungary, Poland, Switzerland, Sweden, Ukraine, USA and ESA. Polish
contribution to this mission was to design and to build a device, called
"Chomik" (hamster), to gather some amount of Phobos' soil. Main goal of
this mission was landing on invisible from Mars side of Phobos, collecion
of small sample of Phobos' soil and then delivery it to Earth.
The mission was launched on 8 November 2011, 20:16 UT from the Baikonur
Cosmodrome, but did not launch to Mars as it was supposed to. Not all of
rockets were launched properly, probably due to
an on-board computer failure and mission failed. During a few weeks the
Phobos-Grunt will burn into Earth atmosphere.
Source: Space Research
Center, Russian Space Web, Wikipedia.
The Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, when is high in the sky, is easily visible with
a naked eye. It can be as bright as 1.1 magnitudo (similar to Spica in Virgo,
Fomalhaut in Piscis Austrinus or Pollux in Gemini). Precise ephemeris of
pass above your place of observation you can find on Heavens-Above. Here there are links
to ephemerides for INTA, SPdA and Warsaw, Poland.
If someone prefers digits in a table, then such ephemerides are available on NASA's JPL site, but on this
website one have to change "Target body" to
"[-137872] Phobos-Soil_1 (PHSRM=Phobos-Grunt)", "Observer Location" and
optionally "Table settings" in order to get accurate ephemerides.
Pi of the Sky was asked to follow the start of the Fobos-Soil
mission with our detector in San Pedro de
Atacama, Chile. Unfortunately, due to known problems, we were
unable to see the satelite in the scheduled period of time.
Instead, we attempted to follow it on the parking orbit.
Below there are a few pictures in which the Fobos-Grunt is recorded.
There are cuttings which cover 8°x8° of the sky (click in the picture to
enlarge).
Phobos-Grunt is very fast, typically it moves about 15° per minute and
for this reason it is not easy to follow. The characteristic V-shaped track
on the first image is due to the fact that detector moved to the
new position a fraction of a seond before the end of the exposure.
This is also the reason why the Phobos-Grunt track is not stright and the
stars images have long "tails" on the second frame.
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| Coordinates: RA = 2h 33m 2s, Dec = -76° 14′ 24″ | Coordinates: RA = 0h 56m 16s, Dec = -84° 43′ 48″ |
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| Coordinates: RA = 23h 41m 14s, Dec = -71° 22′ 30″ | Coordinates: RA = 23h 34m 32s, Dec = -74° 33′ 36″ |
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| Coordinates: RA = 23h 5m 26s, Dec = -61° 19′ 12″ | Coordinates: RA = 22h 36m 44s, Dec = -63° 37′ 48″ |
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