Mar 28 1989
From The Space Library
In a severe setback for the Soviet Union's planetary exploration program, Soviet ground controllers lost stable radio contact with the untended Phobos 2 Mars probe, the Tass news agency reported. Phobos 2 stopped responding to ground control commands shortly after the craft was ordered to perform a delicate maneuver around the Mars moon Phobos. The maneuver was an initial step toward landing a probe on the Martian moon. During its transit toward Mars, Phobos 2 had experienced a failure of its main radio transmitter, forcing ground controllers to rely on a low-power backup transmitter for all communications with the spacecraft. A companion spacecraft, Phobos 1, was also lost in September as a result of a ground control command error. The loss of communications with Phobos 2 was described by Western experts as having occurred at the "worst possible time" because few of the main mission objectives had yet been fulfilled. (FBIS-Sov-89-059, Mar 29/89; UPI, Mar 28/89; AP, Mar 29/89; NY Times, Mar 29/89; W Post, Mar 29/89; W Times, Mar 29/89; P Inq, Mar 29/89)
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