Solar Study Plan Hindered as Soviet Spacecraft Phobos 1 Loses Contact

A Soviet spacecraft en route to Mars is now completely out of control because of a command error from the ground, robbing an international team of scientists of a key player in one of the most ambitious programs ever undertaken to study the sun, U.S. scientists have been informed.

Even if the Phobos 1 is eventually brought back under control, it will be too late for it to take part in a worldwide program this month to examine the sun simultaneously with a wide range of instruments as part of “International Solar Month.”

“We’re devastated,” said Joan Schmelz, a solar physicist with Applied Research Corp., who is under contract with the Goddard Space Flight Center near Washington.

Schmelz said she was notified by a colleague in Moscow that Soviet officials have not ruled out re-establishing contact with the spacecraft, but even if that eventually is accomplished, the results of the solar research program “will not be as fantastic as we had expected.”

The erroneous command apparently caused the spacecraft to lose its orientation with the sun and its communication antenna is no longer pointed at the Earth. It is probably wobbling as it speeds along on its seven-month trip to Mars.

U.S. experts believe, however, that computers aboard Phobos 1 likely will correct the problem automatically if the craft’s wobble eventually points its solar sensors toward the sun.

But that could take three or four weeks, and by then much of the planned research will have been completed.

Scientists around the world are studying the sun from observatories in 12 countries ranging from Australia to Asia to the United States to Europe. The sun is entering what scientists expect to be one of the most active periods in recorded history, and they are anxious to seize the moment.

The period is called solar maximum because it is a time of great storms on the sun that occur in 11-year cycles. This cycle, however, promises to be something really spectacular.

During solar maximum, the sun erupts in solar flares that extend thousands of miles into space, exploding with energy equivalent to millions of hydrogen bombs. Powerful solar flares can cause magnetic storms that interrupt communications on Earth and even knock satellites out of orbit.

Solar Storms

So far this year, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have recorded solar storms that eclipse the most active years in history. The activity is reflected in a growing number of sunspots, relatively cool areas that drift across the surface of the sun as symptoms of the fierce activity. The solar storms are expected to peak in December of next year.

With all of that in mind, astronomers around the world have been eager to take part in the international solar program this month as the sun’s activity moves into high gear.

Phobos 1 was to have worked in concert with an aging U.S. satellite that is now in orbit around the Earth. The solar maximum satellite has an X-ray camera similar to the one carried aboard Phobos 1, and the two craft were to have looked at the sun from different angles, giving scientists their first three-dimensional view of the sun.

But the instrument aboard the U.S. satellite is running out of the fuel that is crucial to its operation, and the satellite itself is in danger of tumbling out of orbit and crashing to Earth. The satellite should have been recovered or serviced by the space shuttle a couple of years ago, but the grounding of the shuttle in the aftermath of the Challenger disaster ruled that out.

“Solar Max is due to re-enter (the Earth’s atmosphere) in 1990,” Schmelz said.

Shuttle Mission Demands

The space shuttle could boost it to a higher orbit and prevent its demise, but “there are no plans to do that at this time,” she added. Demands for shuttle missions are so great that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been unable to come up with a mission that could meet some of its more pressing goals and still manage to boost the satellite.

If Phobos 1 cannot be recovered, it will rob the solar maximum scientists of one of their better bargaining chips in the struggle to save their own satellite. The Soviet and U.S. spacecraft were to work together again in 1990, when Phobos is to be on the opposite side of the sun, but if the Soviet craft is out of contact that program also will be lost.

But now it appears that Phobos 1 will be absent from the party. And a second spacecraft, Phobos 2, which is still functioning normally, differs from its sister craft in only one respect. It does not have the X-ray camera that was to have played such a crucial role in the solar research program.

The loss of Phobos 1--even if it proves permanent--does not necessarily mean a serious setback to the Soviet Mars program, however. Soviet spacecraft are always launched in pairs so that if one fails the other can complete the program.

There have been no problems with Phobos 2, so Soviet scientists still expect to complete their primary mission, which includes a close-up study of the tiny, tortured Martian moon Phobos. The moon, less than 15 miles in diameter, is in an orbit that subjects it to such gravitational stresses from Mars that it is constantly threatened with being torn apart.