by CAROLE ROBERTS
Earlier this year, Russia's Phobos-Grunt to Mars never left
Earth orbit.
Russian space officials are rekindling their
plans for moon exploration, and some say a rebirth of that country's robotic
space endeavours beyond low-Earth orbit is on the horizon.
Work is already underway on the Luna-Glob and
Luna-Resource missions, to be launched in the coming years. These orbiters and
landers are preludes to future spacecraft that would haul lunar samples back to
Earth, ostensibly setting the stage for even grander plans, such as a Russian
moon base.
Also on the Russian space books is an aggressive
Venus mission, as well as an attempt at the first Mercury landing.
Grand plans these, but are they on solid footing
given Russia's ruinous track record over many years in pushing payloads to
other worlds? For example, a mix of technological snafus and poor management
botched the Phobos-Grunt Mars mission earlier this year, and the failed probe
to fell back to Earth without reaching the Red Planet.
Nevertheless, any visit to the astronautical
archives shows that the Cold War-fuelled former Soviet Union chalked up
numerous successes at the moon, Venus and elsewhere. But that was then, and
this is now
A Luna renaissance
Indeed, the Russians "have been engaged for
some time in a renaissance of their extremely successful Luna program,"
said James Head, a noted space scientist within the Department of Geological
Sciences at Brown University.
Head observed the program's past track record,
in which the former Soviet Union successfully completed three robotic
sample-return missions at the moon (Luna 16, 20, and 24), also succeeding with
two very well-instrumented robotic lunar rovers — Lunokhod 1 (Luna 17) and
Lunokhod 2 (Luna 21) — and several orbiters, all undertaken more than 35 years
ago.
"These basic accomplishments represent an
amazing robotic capability not duplicated by anyone, including the United
States," Head said.
The Russians are building on the original clever
and novel engineering designs for these missions and thinking ahead, with a
focus on polar landers and a search for volatiles in the polar and near-polar
regions, Head said.
"Sample-return missions are very likely to
focus on the discoveries of the early polar Luna lander and rover
missions," Head continued, "and involve the return of
volatile-containing samples using special devices for preservation and
return."
Candidate
landing sites
Russia's Luna-Resource mission is on the books
as part of that country's reconnection with moon exploration.
At Brown University, Head and his team have collaborated
for years with their Russian colleagues from the Institute for Space Research
and the Vernadsky Institute. Working together, these teams have scoped out
candidate landing sites for lunar spacecraft, and also possible destinations
for future Lunokhod rovers and sample-return missions to the moon.
"The Russian lunar strategy is clearly
working toward a set of larger Russian national goals," Head said. For
example, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin recently stated that
Russia should build a large lunar base for scientific advancement and that this
"super goal" could be used to achieve "leaps" in science
and to give a new sense of purpose to Russia's space program.
Rogozin has stated that the moon base, which
would include cosmonauts, should be a jumping-off point for future deep-space
projects, Head said.
"While the United States seems to be
abandoning human and robotic lunar surface exploration for the near future, the
Russians clearly see it as a major international and national leadership
opportunity and technology driver," Head concluded. "And [they] are
proceeding vigorously."
Tragic
loss of vision
Last October, Wesley Huntress, Junior, director
emeritus of the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of
Washington teamed up with Mikhail Marov, a professor and academician of the Russian
Academy of Sciences, to detail the history and future of Russia's robotic lunar
and planetary exploration program.
Speaking at a symposium on the 50th anniversary
of planetary exploration in Arlington, Virgini., Huntress underscored the
"tragic loss of vision, enterprise and expertise" of the former
Soviet Union's (now Russia's) robotic planetary effort.
They had become handicapped by poor electronics
technology, poor system engineering management, insufficient ground systems
testing, and a complex, entangled, heavy-handed national system of control and
supply, Huntress noted.
According to Marov, the disintegration of the
former Soviet Union, followed by social-economic turmoil dramatically affected
the Russian space program, specifically solar system exploration.
Marov emphasized in his talk that Russia's space
budget has shrunk many times, with the lion's share of its funding going for
orbital station operations and support for the Mir program, Mir-space shuttle
dockings and then-involvement in the International Space Station.
"Space facilities were partially destroyed,
cooperative links broken, many skilled personnel in space science and
technology lost," Marov reported.
In reviewing last year's launch, subsequent
breakdown and fiery Earth re-entry of the Mars-bound Phobos-Grunt mission,
Marov said that, basically, the failure was caused by factors rooted in the
destructive 1990s, whose consequences "have not been yet overcome … though
lessons were learned."
Despite these observations, Marov said that the
Russian robotic space program still has life in it. "The situation right
now is much more optimistic," he said.
Indeed, Russia has an enviable record of
exploration on Venus, the moon and Halley's Comet, explained Marcia Smith,
editor of the SpacePolicyOnline.com website.
"Despite setbacks, Russia today has an
ambitious planetary exploration plan that may well be achievable
technically," Smith said, "but is subject to funding constraints that
may lead to schedule delays and increased interest in international
cooperation."
Exploring
other options
Asif Siddiqi, an associate professor in the
history department of Fordham University in New York, shared that view. He is a
scholarly specialist in Soviet Union and Russian space endeavours.
"The Russians have never lacked in terms of
ambitious plans, but the record of accomplishments in the past 20 years has
obviously been poor," Siddiqi said. "I don't see any fundamental
shift that's happened to change the paradigm. Although there are some small
signs, such as cooperation with both the European Space Agency and India that
suggest that they are exploring other options.
"The Phobos-Grunt disaster was a huge let-down,"
Siddiqi said, "because they prepared that mission over a long period of
time." Overall, he views the Russian space industry as being beset by
several issues: quality control problems, some degree of corruption and brain
drain, as well as financing problems — money is tight.
"Put all this together and it creates a
very risky situation," Siddiqi said.
Wait and see
One Russian development to watch, Siddiqi
explained, is the Skolkovo high-tech project, a plan to mimic Silicon Valley in
terms of innovative research and production that may well find a home within
Russian space development circles.
Siddiqi also senses that there's a wait-and-see
attitude about whether or not the next set of robotic lunar missions will work.
"My guess is that if they are successful,
you are going to start seeing more missions in the 2020s … but, of course, that
also depends on their economy," Siddiqi said. "I would guess we'll
see what happens in the next five years … and that will tell us a lot."
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