7 ms·

Signal picked up from Russia's stranded Mars probe

89 points by udp 15y ago

eps 15y ago
Fingers crossed.
mhw 15y ago
> The agency had to modify its 15m dish in Perth to get through to Phobos-Grunt. This required widening the antenna's beam to catch the probe in its uncertain orbit. > Perth also reduced the power of the transmission to make it more like the sort of faint X-band signal the craft would expect to hear at Mars. > "We were able to get our transmission in and the commands that were sent then allowed the transmitter on the spacecraft to be turned on; and then we saw the signal coming back into our big dish," explained Dr Klaus-Juergen Schulz, the head of the ground station systems division at Esa-Esoc. The hacker ethic is alive and well in space operations!
- rsynnott 15y ago
  There's a long history of this sort of thing. All communication with Galileo, for instance, was via the auxiliary transmitter intended to properly target the much bigger main transmitter; the main transmitter dish was damaged on launch.
  - mturmon 15y ago
    As part of the measures to increase the efficiency of transmission, a new coder/decoder was developed to add about 2dB to the SNR to the transmitter. It was called the Big Viterbi Decoder, or BVD for short. The noted information theorist Ed Posner, who was on the design team, quipped, "I've worked on hardware and on software for space systems, but this will be the first time I've worked on underwear."
- joelhaasnoot 15y ago
  There's also a movie on something like this, about the moon landing: "The Dish" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/). Was a good movie I believe, but it's been a while.
rudru 15y ago
Pinged. Ok.
ANH 15y ago
Spaceflight Now is reporting that no meaningful telemetry was picked up, but a signal was acquired. They're going to try again from Perth today: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1111/23phobosgrunt/ http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1111/23phobosgrunt/
sylvinus 15y ago
It's nice to see the ESA working to help the Russians, I guess they do it mostly for science's sake!
- varjag 15y ago
  ESA and RKA cooperate very closely in many areas.
  - arethuza 15y ago
    Arianespace is even doing commercial launches of Soyuz rockets from Guiana: http://www.arianespace.com/launch-services-soyuz/soyuz-introduction.asp http://www.arianespace.com/launch-services-soyuz/soyuz-intro...
- olaf 15y ago
  Cold war is over.
- rsynnott 15y ago
  In practice, all national/supranational agencies tend to collaborate to an extent on these things.
gregschlom 15y ago
> The best scenario is that the issues are related to a software anomaly, and that engineers can then upload new commands. Dear Santa, please bring me a 15m dish for Christmas, because I badly want to try to upload new commands too. More seriously, I never realized that there are probably a lot of hackable things flying above our heads, provided that you have the appropriate equipment.
- ceejayoz 15y ago
  I'd imagine you need a particular encryption key to do it.
  - gregschlom 15y ago
    I'd bet, though, that many things aren't very well protected, because people designing space systems assume that nobody is going to try to mess with them, and also because they probably use proprietary communication protocols. But just imagine how cool it would be to ssh into a satellite :)
    - garyrichardson 15y ago
      It would be cool, but the latency would drive me crazy.
    - nobody314159265 15y ago
      Just like the people that design SCADA systems in fact
    - bsnyder 15y ago
      A few years ago I worked for a satellite imagery company. I can tell you that communications with space vehicles in orbit are heavily encrypted using very strong and very proprietary algorithms that require special hardware. Because of this encryption, I had to acquire a government security clearance.
      - jl6 15y ago

89 points by udp 15y ago

eps 15y ago

Fingers crossed.

mhw 15y ago

> The agency had to modify its 15m dish in Perth to get through to Phobos-Grunt. This required widening the antenna's beam to catch the probe in its uncertain orbit. > Perth also reduced the power of the transmission to make it more like the sort of faint X-band signal the craft would expect to hear at Mars. > "We were able to get our transmission in and the commands that were sent then allowed the transmitter on the spacecraft to be turned on; and then we saw the signal coming back into our big dish," explained Dr Klaus-Juergen Schulz, the head of the ground station systems division at Esa-Esoc. The hacker ethic is alive and well in space operations!

rsynnott 15y ago
There's a long history of this sort of thing. All communication with Galileo, for instance, was via the auxiliary transmitter intended to properly target the much bigger main transmitter; the main transmitter dish was damaged on launch.
- mturmon 15y ago
  As part of the measures to increase the efficiency of transmission, a new coder/decoder was developed to add about 2dB to the SNR to the transmitter. It was called the Big Viterbi Decoder, or BVD for short. The noted information theorist Ed Posner, who was on the design team, quipped, "I've worked on hardware and on software for space systems, but this will be the first time I've worked on underwear."
joelhaasnoot 15y ago
There's also a movie on something like this, about the moon landing: "The Dish" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/). Was a good movie I believe, but it's been a while.

rudru 15y ago

Pinged. Ok.

ANH 15y ago

Spaceflight Now is reporting that no meaningful telemetry was picked up, but a signal was acquired. They're going to try again from Perth today: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1111/23phobosgrunt/ http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1111/23phobosgrunt/

sylvinus 15y ago

It's nice to see the ESA working to help the Russians, I guess they do it mostly for science's sake!

varjag 15y ago
ESA and RKA cooperate very closely in many areas.
- arethuza 15y ago
  Arianespace is even doing commercial launches of Soyuz rockets from Guiana: http://www.arianespace.com/launch-services-soyuz/soyuz-introduction.asp http://www.arianespace.com/launch-services-soyuz/soyuz-intro...
olaf 15y ago
Cold war is over.
rsynnott 15y ago
In practice, all national/supranational agencies tend to collaborate to an extent on these things.

gregschlom 15y ago

> The best scenario is that the issues are related to a software anomaly, and that engineers can then upload new commands. Dear Santa, please bring me a 15m dish for Christmas, because I badly want to try to upload new commands too. More seriously, I never realized that there are probably a lot of hackable things flying above our heads, provided that you have the appropriate equipment.

ceejayoz 15y ago
I'd imagine you need a particular encryption key to do it.
- gregschlom 15y ago
  I'd bet, though, that many things aren't very well protected, because people designing space systems assume that nobody is going to try to mess with them, and also because they probably use proprietary communication protocols. But just imagine how cool it would be to ssh into a satellite :)
  - garyrichardson 15y ago
    It would be cool, but the latency would drive me crazy.
  - nobody314159265 15y ago
    Just like the people that design SCADA systems in fact
  - bsnyder 15y ago
    A few years ago I worked for a satellite imagery company. I can tell you that communications with space vehicles in orbit are heavily encrypted using very strong and very proprietary algorithms that require special hardware. Because of this encryption, I had to acquire a government security clearance.
    - jl6 15y ago