ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, November 19, 1996 TAG: 9611190116
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: MOSCOW
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
The crash Sunday of Russia's rocket to Mars was the latest sign of the humiliation that's become routine for Russia's space program.
A Burran shuttlecraft, part of a fleet that never got the funding to fly, is now an attraction for children at Gorky Park. Cosmonauts aboard the old Mir space station routinely must wait for the homeland to afford a flight home, and just a few weeks ago they had to suffer the stench of an overflowing sewage system.
But Sunday's failure of the ambitious Russian Mars 96 mission was the most serious blow to the Russian space program since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Russian scientists watched in horror early Sunday as their uninsured, $300 million spacecraft blinked off the control screens when the engine in the fourth-stage booster did not fire. The space probe, the largest interplanetary craft ever launched, bounced out of orbit and out of control after the rocket's fourth stage failed to provide enough speed.
The craft's crash into the Pacific Ocean was potentially disastrous for a program reliant on the international confidence that attracts lucrative commercial contracts.
``It has come as a terrible blow for all of us,'' Yuri Milov, a deputy head of the Russian Space Agency, said in Moscow. ``We were pinning so many hopes on that unique mission.''
At a news conference in Moscow on Monday, Milov and other scientists from the project said they still don't know why the booster engine didn't fire.
The Russian space officials said they believe the craft fell into the South Pacific in two parts. The probe splashed down between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. EST Saturday, they said. Fragments of the engine crashed separately, but in the same area and exactly 24 hours later, the Russians said.
Although the spacecraft had been designed to withstand entry into the Martian atmosphere, the U.S. Space Command said it could not confirm whether any pieces survived the fiery fall.
In a nation with world-class scientists who go unpaid, drive cabs, or even kill themselves as in the case last month of a top nuclear researcher despondent over his finances, space technology is one the few areas where Russia remains competitive.
So, aside from the $300 million loss, the crash of Mars 96 darkens the prospects for the Russian space industry. With federal funding dwindling, the federal government has decided that the space program will have to become reliant on Western partners.
Although the Mars 96 probe, which would have landed on Mars in September 1997, was built completely with Russian government funds, half of the total cost of the project was borne by 22 other countries that had experiments riding on the spacecraft.
``One could argue that this was a fluke, and not at all that big a setback. There are lots of space failures all the time - a $100 million Indonesian satellite just recently,'' said Glenn Schweitzer, head of the National Research Council's Eurasian department and a participant in the search for radioactive debris from a Soviet spacecraft that fell in Canada in 1978.
``But this was a failure up there [over Earth], and it had plutonium. If this didn't have plutonium, no one would pay any attention.''
It was 39 years ago this month that the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, and with it the space race with the United States.
The Soviets consistently were one step ahead of the United States - sometimes by just a matter of weeks - in launching the first animal in space, first man in space, first lunar fly-by, first Venus fly-by, first Mars fly-by, first woman in space, first spacewalk and first unmanned soft lunar landing.
Space was as much a scientific challenge as it was a patriotic undertaking and geopolitical tool for both countries. Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, remains as much an icon in democratic Russia as he was a Soviet communist hero.
``Russians are still quite proud of the space program,'' said pollster Vladimir Andreenkov. They rank space exploration ``of average importance'' to the nation even though economic concerns are consistently the biggest worry.
LENGTH: Medium: 78 linesby CNB