Sunday, January 15, 2012

Monitors The Possibility of Phobos-Grunt Entering Republic of Indonesia


The National Space and Aviation Agency (Lapan) is closely monitoring the possible location of falling Russian space vehicle Phobos-Grunt, which is estimated to have fallen on Sunday evening or early Monday morning.
The possible atmospheric re-entry spots are the Arafura Sea, Papua, Maluku, Java and Sumatra.
Phobos-Grunt is a probe launched on Nov. 9, 2011, in a sample return mission to Phobos one of Mars’ moons. The probe failed to leave Earth’s orbit.
Lapan researcher Thomas Djamaluddin urged the public on Sunday not to panic because the final trajectory of the atmospheric re-entry could only be determined two hours before impact.
He said the debris of Phobos-Grunt could fall in various sizes, up to several hundreds kilograms in weight, covering an area up to several thousands square-kilometers.
“The probe weighs 13.2 tons, but once it enters the Earth’s atmosphere at 120-kilometers, it will be heated and then burned due to friction by the air,” he told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
“The remainder will weigh some hundreds of kilograms in various fragments which could reach the earth.”
Thomas said the certainty over whether Indonesia would be included on the final trajectory could only be achieved on Sunday evening.
Lapan, he said, could not monitor the re-entry process as the probe could not be detected using ordinary radar.
“We can only create possible trajectory based on the latest orbital data acquired from the US International Space Surveillance,” Thomas said. (nvn)
source : jakarta post

1 comment:

David Abraham said...

Nice informative blog, thanks for sharing.