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Space

Russian Space Controllers Lose Contact With Mir (UPDATED) 61

Posted by michael from the look-out-below! dept.
Ben De Luca pointed out that CNN has a headline story about losing contact with the unmanned Mir space station. Hmmmm. So much for a "controlled descent." Update: 12/26 06:37 PM by T : Contact has been regained (thanks, Nennon) -- so, no Skylabs worries, yet.
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Russian Space Controllers Lose Contact with Mir More

Russian Space Controllers Lose Contact with Mir

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  • I submitted this before there was even a page on CNN. *grumble*
    Comics:
    Sluggy.com [sluggy.com] - Poing!
  • I have no idea how space stuff works, but couldn't they send up some kind of missile to blow Mir to pieces? If it's done right, all the parts might be small enough to burn up in the atmostphere, no?

  • hmmm (Score:1)

    by Boolean ( 15853 )
    A highly unstable space probe is being decomissioned. On its controlled re-entry burnup, it loses contact with the world. After awhile, contact is regained....
    It was supposed to brun up entering the atmosphere
    It didn't
    And now its brought something with it...

    Expect to see The MIR Incident out in theatres this summer!

    If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit. -- Robert Anton Wilson
  • But just think, Australia could create a whole industry selling (tons upon tons of) genuine pieces of MIR just like we did with skylab all those years ago.
  • According to CNN they lost it again after 7 minutes =(

    ShadoWolf
  • Right now it looks like they are aiming at right NZ (read the Age -- see that 2000km east bit). Now I know the Kiwis and Russia have had problems in the past but I can't understand why Russia is resorting to killing sheep from space. There just isn't any call for it. Talk about being protective of the wool industry.

    Besides if it accidently hits Oz, who will know about it? I think all the TV cameras have gone home after the Olympics.
  • "HAL. HAL! HAL damnit will you answer me!"
  • ok.. please don't hurt me.. I'll do anything you want, anything.. just tell me what to do.. I want you to punish me.
  • So is THAT why we had the solar eclipse on xmas! I really thought it was too soon to have yet another solar eclipse that was visible here in the states. Actually, I didn't even notice it. And I was out driving during the peak time.
  • Temporal Violation by Cpt J. T. Kirk.
    The man is a menace.
  • As stated originally, currently its impossible and requires design time.

    If I'm not mistaken theres a lot of laser research going on at the moment.
  • Not to mention that guiding a missle in space is NOT really possible.. Afterall, they depend on gravity and a little bit of friction from the air around them for guidance. Likleyhood of missing is really high.

    Have to specially design something for that, or send up explosives in the shuttle or something.
  • Bah, I think it was the martians who nabbed it or destroyed it. We are since a long time back, at war with the martians, don't you people know that?
  • Full Contact has been re-established. According to NBC News and the following CNN article: http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/12/26/mir.conta ct.04/index.html [cnn.com]

  • Not long ago it seems we had a problem on linking to ISS during one of the major events there.

    Could that be because MPAA confused ISS and DeCSS and ordered Houston to remove all links to ISS from it's operation site?

    (Ducking after a corny joke)

  • How does a space program "lose contact" with a space station? Wait, duh. Better question. How does a space program regain contact with a space station?! I don't mean to be a pessimist, but if this thing is coming down and we can't control it, um, who's gonna get hit?
  • :)
    --
    mrBlond
  • ...I'll carry an umbrella with me, just in case... this thing is falling to pieces!
  • Matter of fact, they do [friends-partners.org]. Their shuttle is called "Buran," which means "snowstorm" IIRC; it was designed to be launched with the Energia booster [friends-partners.org].

    Buran is extremely close to the Shuttle in general design, although quite a few details are different. It had exactly one flight (unmanned) before the USSR ran out of money, so all the hardware has been mothballed (at best). One of the testbed spacecraft is now in Gorky Park, used as an amusement ride...

    So you're correct in a way: The Russians don't have an active shuttle at the moment. But they do indeed have one.

    ---

  • MIR passes overhead just less than once an hour

    It's more like every 90 minutes: it's in low earth orbit.

    ---

  • Sounds like a secondary plot for the movie. Could it graduate into a multipart movie series?

    :)
  • While it would take some design time, a missile in space wouldn't be that difficult. Attitude control can be done with flywheels...Not everything has to be done with gassious thrusters.
  • The Burning of Mir!

    Mir Mir Mir
    what have yee become?
    lifeless, dormant, useless
    much like Iridium

    Reeking of sweat
    wiped from a brow
    designed for Russians,
    and not those American sows

    At first a triumph
    followed by fear
    then liability
    and fourth a sneer
    from those pesky Americans
    and their giant wallets
    I longed for some Cold War
    and the restrictions on mullet
    for then surely we could of got mir2 out of the closet

    But woe, this is not to be!!
    and like Nero in the flames of Rome
    a tear graces my cheek
    as I lay down to bed hoping it won't land on me

    BJB




  • Come on guys, this will just be an oppurtunity to rig up some junk to be identified as MIR to crash into the Pacific. The real MIR will undergo some modifications and will continue to circle the Earth, but under the control of whomever the Russians sold it to.
  • HA!
    That is funny
    Just proves that they are going to kill us all, be it by lost nuke-suitcases or falling space stations... I wouldnt mind seeing another headline: "San Francisco Destroyed!", "Finialy, I knew that space thing would pay off" said one russian. Not that I want to die, but its along the lines of the french getting to kill germans via the concord crash....
  • Bah humbug, they've got it back. But wait, all is not lost! A dull slow-news end-of-year snoozefest could still be kicked into life...

    CNN reports the Russians saying "Contact was restored at around 4 p.m. local time (1300 GMT), and reported nothing unusual in the station's operation. They said the crisis was over." -- except that they don't say what caused the blackout in the first place, nor how to fix it, or even what's stopping it happening again. If I were the crew training to go up and prepare it for a controlled de-orbiting I'd be checking my life insurance. And possibly taking an Iridium phone...
    --
    If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles

  • "Agency officials said during the first connection controllers were able to connect with only part of the station for a brief period. During this time they were able to confirm that the station was "alive and breathing." "

    They continued, "and look at the patterns, dude, they're like huge fractal webs spun by the great light-spider! And it's moving, man, check it out!!!!!

    Sounds like they're having a very merry Christmas in mission control...
    --
    If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles

  • Guess the fungus got 'em, eh?
  • No I didn't. I thought I solved that thing after the famous 2001 "Blaster Launcher Incident" on Cydonia...
  • Oh, of course. A killer fungus from outer space plot to kill George W. Bush. So, where do I sign up?
  • Hmm... looks like you forgot the .com in CNN. Correct link here: http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/12/26/mir.conta ct.02/index.html [cnn.com].

    Of course, now they are at story 4 [cnn.com], which says they have full contact restored. The first time it only lasted seven minutes.

  • HEHEHE they already got the link to the robots on the front page! (or is that what you're pointing out? :)
  • [mircorp@mir] $ nohup ping -c 1000000000000 -s 65507 russiacontrol.mir > /dev/null &
    [mircorp@mir] $

    [russia@mir] $ telnet mir
    Trying mir...
    telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: No route to host
    You never know :P
  • I know. My phrase was meant to mean, less than once every hour. Sorry for the confusion.
    ---
  • The orbits of Mir and the ISS are not in the same plane; it would take more fuel to move hardware between the two than to launch it in the first place.

    Now there had been some debate about whether to launch the ISS to the same orbit as Mir, for that very purpose. The Russians wanted to use some of Mir's newer modules, such as Priroda, as extra modules for the ISS. As far as I understand it, NASA refused because they did not want the possibility that anybody might see the ISS as a Russian station with American modules rather than a joint project or maybe the reverse.

  • I don't think it's the right thing to do. Blowing it up would create a tremendous amount of debris, some of which could take a long time to reenter the atmosphere; it would eventually scatter and could be a serious hazard to satellites in low Earth orbit. Bye bye, ISS!
  • Definitely not the US; the shuttles' schedule is full and they can't send send them at less than several months' notice anyway. Remember when the Hubble Space Telescope's gyroscopes failed [nasa.gov]? The "emergency repairs" took six months to prepare and that was just a scheduling change of an already-planned servicing mission...

    No, the Russians could send up a Soyuz as planned, maybe a little earlier. If they can dock with an uncontrolled station.

  • If the weather cooperates, perhaps it would be interesting to check a satellite visibility prediction site (I know of Heavens-Above [heavens-above.com] but there are others) and watch now and then; if it shines steadily while passing overhead, all right, but if its brightness varies erratically it could be bad, very bad: this is not 2010, there is no way to dock with a tumbling station...

    Now, of course, it's not serious yet, but that's what everybody said would happen when they left it unmanned last year.

  • I am guessed that it would be there ben de luca
  • Against the law.

    The American ASAT and the Russian 51T6 Gorgon - which is the ABM system that defend Moscow...while they could hit Mir...it is against International Agreements to do so. That's why the American ASAT, which was launched from an F-15 was abandoned in the late 80s. The Russian ABMs are still operational...I think. But they are nuclear armed.
  • On the picture, there are some really out of place images splashed in. Especially the the Baseball Pitcher - Not "this looks like a baseball pitcher" - it looks like a digitally-perfect baseball pitcher walking on the baseball field. Very weird.

    There are weird bald heads and Alien embryos. I am not kidding. It's way strange. Check it out at http://ooze.bloomnet.com/scarecrow/faces/ [bloomnet.com]

  • And Beethoven's head floating ghost-like over the whole thing. Almost scary!
  • Weird, Yahoonews has changed the image to a different shot, I wonder if they are trying to cover something up? ;)
  • Well it seems that it is not the first time for this thing to happen. But it seems that this one was the longest. As far as I know such things happen very frequently in Space due to a whole series of events. Not long ago it seems we had a problem on linking to ISS during one of the major events there.

    Anyway /. should be careful on stating these "so much for "controlled descent"". First note that Russia has two emergency crews ready for any case. And a ship to jump ASAP to Mir if anything serious happens. Besides Russians had already to deal with a major glitch. Salyut 7 once broke all communications. Cosmonauts met the station spinning in a weird way and with absolutely no power at all. What happened next was enough for a blockbuster. The guys started to spin their own ship to get in. They had to hammer the door as everything was covered with ice (think about kicking something without gravity). And they had to enter the station fully equipped as even air froze inside. They managed to put things back working and the station lived a few monthes more.

    So better to hold your breath... If something real wrong happens, you may see something costing 100 Holywood cheap SF films...

  • 6:40 p.m. Moscow time was 10:40 A.M. Eastern time. That's about the same time as the lunar eclipse started [cnn.com]. I wonder how long Mir spent in Luna's shadow that day, as that reduced the power from its solar panels.

    (As for not noticing the eclipse without looking at it, that's because the effect of this partial eclipse was similar to an ordinary cloudy day -- at about 90% totality you start noticing odd things such as a silvery sheen on the landscape.)

  • I found this on Yahoo! before seeing the CNN reference here.

    Interesting that there's no update...
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • As far as I understand it, NASA refused because they did not want the possibility that anybody might see the ISS as a Russian station with American modules rather than a joint project or maybe the reverse.

    Sort of right. Originally the Russians didn't want the stations to be near each other because of communication problems - it takes 2+ hours for them to configure their communications facilities for each station, hence the stations need to be at least that far apart with more being better...

    Less then a month before the launch of the first element, 'Russia' asked if it could put it closer to MIR (probably to bring over some modules - it would be cheaper for them and they don't have much money). Of course, the Russians that asked for this were ignoring the communication problem (it hadn't gone away) and weren't from the group who knew what it really took to run both MIR and IIS. The Russian space program is really a whole bunch of minor agencies and commerical entities all trying to get a bigger slice of a shrinking pie.

  • At least here in the most populated parts of europe, the orbital tracks dont go directly over any major cities until, well, tomorrow. Plenty of time to get drunk enough to forget about this :-)

    I don't find this news to be particularly newsworthy, except it is a slow news day. The timing sounds like a ploy to grab a little extra publicity, and possibly gain some more funding to keep the station going for another six months or more. Mir will stay up for at least another couple of years given its current orbital decay. The problem is what happens when the gyros stop. Once the gyros stop, the station will start a slow tumble, which will make it that much harder to predict when and where it might fall.

    Fully expect this to become a non-event once they try all the alternative frequencies and command procedures and get some kind of response. Maybe this little incident will spur them onto bringing the station down in February as planned, while they still have some control, and not sell out to greedy television shows and ego-centric millionaires.

    the AC
  • Oh now that's totally boring. I know it's christmas guys and you're busy drinking nog and watching reruns of It's a Wonderful Life, but just grabbing the headline off CNN and posting it on Slashdot is sad! Surely somewhere there is a fair use right being trampled or maybe you can do a summary of all the evil that corporations have pulled off over the holidays.
  • well according to a BBC report it seems that things are not completely horrible. According
    to the report the options include waiting for
    contact to be made (they say that its not the first time that contact was lost) OR send a shuttle up to bring the space station down in a more controlled manner. One thing that was not mentioned was WHO would be sending up the shuttle ? US or Russia.... well if it is the US i am sure the movie to follow will be pretty damn cool... heck even if russians bring it down well the movie will still be pretty cool (one more chance for Tom Hanks to show us his skill :)
  • Or at least that's what they say. Anybody remember the Kursk?
  • The human eye/brain combination is great at picking up things that look familiar -- especially faces. Even when they're not there... like the Cydonia "face" on Mars.

    Problem is, once someone sees something like that, it's almost impossible to convince them it's just an illusion, a coincidence of light and shadow. Check out the pic that Yahoo has up now -- almost nothing from the original "faces" is there. It's just the original angle that did it.

    ---

  • Yes... [cnn.com], just heard in the radio too.

    --ricardo

  • Too bad it has to burn up. This would make a great museum piece(s). It symbolizes much of the space programs for the 1990s. No one sent a man to the moon. The US put Hubble into orbit, only to fix/upgrade it 3 times now, to capture some of the most stunning photographs ever. The US had 2 failed missions to Mars. China started its own space program. And the international community has come together to build a new International Space Station. ISS sounds better than Alpha, Enterprise, or whatever else they call it, IMO.

    But for many years, Mir has stayed together, stayed serviceable, and provided a wealth of information to the scientific community. US astronauts shaking hands with Russian cosmonauts in a Russian craft 20 years ago would've been unheard of. Its nice to see that people have come together with a common goal and worked together to achieve it. Hopefully this progress will continue into this century. But I could write a long essay about peace and greed, so I'll save that for another day.

    Mir, I salute you.

    Amigori

    ------------
    Why are politics so corrupt?

  • It's a good thing they lost control of it. I hope it crashes into someone, just to teach those godless heathens a lesson pertaining to the realms they should be mucking with.

    What next, robots that build themselves???


    -CoG

    "And with HIS stripes we are healed"
  • I wonder how this will affect the plans for a controlled descent? According to The Age [theage.com.au], there are already concerns that large pieces of it could hit Australia.

    They say that the largest pieces are expected to weigh more than half a metric tonne. That would hurt!

  • I think I'll try to contact it with my ham radio equipment - I haven't worked MIR for over a year, but for all I know the packet digipeater might still be up.

    If so, you can hear it with a simple Radio Shack scanner: MIR passes overhead just less than once an hour for about a 10 minute period. Tune your radio to 145.985 MHz (FM) and listen for packet radio beeps.


    ---

  • Re:Too bad. (Score:3)

    by Julius X ( 14690 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2000 @06:13AM (#1420523) Homepage
    US astronauts shaking hands with Russian cosmonauts in a Russian craft 20 years ago would've been unheard of. Its nice to see that people have come together with a common goal and worked together to achieve it.

    Uhm..... Russians and Americans did shake hands in space roughly 25 years ago, long before Mir, on the Apollo-Soyuz mission back in the mid-1970s.

    -Julius X

  • But they're back in contact now (Score:3)

    by hey ( 83763 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2000 @03:55AM (#1420524) Journal
    Now the story [cnn] at CNN says they are back in contact.

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