Russians Can't Make Contact With Busted Space Probe 117
New submitter benfrog writes "Despite repeated attempts over the past few days, Russia is unable to make contact with Phobos-Grunt, the probe that was supposed to make it to Mars and never left Earth's atmosphere. Estimates now vary widely on the time left to contact the probe, but it is descending toward Earth and will likely turn into scrap before it can be reached."
Official information is still hard to come by, but the Planetary Society Weblog has been keeping up with the story.
In Soviet Russia, probes call you (Score:1, Funny)
Re:In Soviet Russia, probes call you (Score:4, Funny)
"Busted", really? (Score:0, Funny)
Dear sirs,
"Busted", as used in this context, is not a real word.
Yours faithfully,
The English Language
Re:"Busted", really? (Score:5, Funny)
Dear pedant,
STFU.
Yours truly,
Everyone Else
FLAWLESS VICTORY! (Score:5, Funny)
What are these "fingers" of which you speak, denizen of the Blue World?
Planetary celebrations [slashdot.org] have been extended for a third day in the light of the latest victory of our special forces team.
K'breel, speaker for the Council, declared:
When a junior blogger for the Red Planetary Society suggested that the only ichor present on the stranded invader consisted of biological samples from the Blue World itself (as part of an experiment in xenobiology), K'Breel had the blogger's gelsacs sealed up in tiny canisters and fired into orbit for three days, and incinerated upon re-entry.
Further rumors that despite the successful defense of Z'treem, the Blue World was prepared to launch a second invader - more mobile, powered by Pew-238, and armed with a glarbin' photonic ampradstim unit on its head, and that the Blue World was prepared to launch this invader within fifteen days - were not raised, and therefore did not need to be addressed by the Council at this time.
Phobos-Grunt? (Score:5, Funny)
Someone in the Russian space program is a big Doom fan it seems.
Anonymous (Score:5, Funny)
Ok Anonymous lets see what you script kiddies really have, take control and fire the cruise stage.
Re:In Soviet Russia, probes call you (Score:5, Funny)
In Rural USA, aliens probe you!
Re:target toronto (Score:4, Funny)
If it lands on Toronto it'll get rid of half the worlds communists.
If it lands on Washington we can give it the Nobel peace prize.
The problem (Score:5, Funny)
Somewhere on the probe, there is a cursor blinking on an small LCD screen ( or CRT, FFS), next to the letters:
STAGE 1 COMPLETE. HIT RETURN TO CONTINUE _