Phobos Grunt made contact with ESA station in Perth

ESA recently managed to make contact with the Russian Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, which was intended to be on its way to Mars, but is unfortunately stuck in Low Earth Orbit.

The contact was made through the ESA ground station at the Perth International Telecommunications Centre on the 22^nd of November. 

 The ESA 15m antenna Ground Station in Perth (Image: ESA)

In the days preceding the contact, the 15m diameter dish was modified by adding a ‘feedhorn antenna’ on the side of the main dish, to allow very-low power signals over a wide sky angle, due to the relatively unknown nature of the orbit, as well as the fact that the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft is optimised to receive only low transmit power signals as expected on the mission to Mars.

 Modifications made to the main dish at the Perth Ground Station (Image: ESA)

In making contact, telecommands from the Russian Mission control were transmitted, with hope that the mission could be recovered.

Unfortunately, since this contact by the Perth Station, no additional contacts have been made, with the window to send the mission to Mars now closed. ESA has also now had to re-task its Perth ground station to support other missions. It is likely that the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft will re-enter the earth’s atmosphere, with predictions of re-entry between lat December 2011 and late February 2012.