Phobos-Grunt status, launch plus six days

[jakeXT]

The spacecraft Phobos-Grunt will have time through January, said the Head of Roskosmos Vladimir Popovkin today.

"We have time till January inclusive, the spacecraft will stay in orbit, but the Mars departure window closes in early December," said the Head of Roskosmos Vladimir Popovkin today.

"There is still a chance, but we were not able to receive any telemetry yet to understand what happened. The problem is that tracking stations are slow and Phobos-Grunt is on an unplanned trajectory, hence the communication session lasts for only 7 minutes."

"All systems of the spacecraft work nominally, it maintains its orientation toward the Sun, so it's not over yet. At the moment engineers conduct attempts to upload software."

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00003261

[sofa king]

1. I wonder why they don't relay signals via geosynchronous orbit?

From 22,300 miles up, a geosynchronous satellite would have a direct line of communication for half of the orbit of Grunt, probably 30-35 minutes. There are dozens of satellites in that orbit which could potentially communicate with the craft, and I'm not even sure one would have to know exactly where it is to reach it with a wide signal.