China's Yinghuo Mars Satellite Lost with Phobos Grunt

The loss of Russia's Phobos-Grunt mission has shocked the spaceflight community.

There's been plenty of attention placed on this high-profile mission, but relatively little coverage of its piggyback payload, Yinghuo-1.

This small satellite was set to become China's first Mars mission. The loss of Phobos-Grunt ended the mission of Yinghuo at the same time.

China's state media were fairly quick and frank to declare Yinghuo lost alongside Phobos-Grunt. In fact, they seemed to be far more direct in reporting the loss of the two spacecraft than Russia's own officials. Having stated this, there was no more reportage on Yinghuo-1.

This is understandable for three main reasons. There was little more that could be said about the fate of the probe, and little incentive to over-report on bad news. Also, China's aerospace reporters were preoccupied with another major story.

As Yinghuo was launched, China's Tiangong 1 space laboratory and Shenzhou 8 spacecraft were successfully operating in orbit. These twin missions have been the real stars of China's recent space activities, and they truly deserve the limelight.

But let's return to Yinghuo-1, which remains stored inside a truss structure beneath Phobos-Grunt. The two spacecraft will probably make an uncontrolled re-entry before the end of the year.

Yinghuo never even got a chance to unfurl its solar panels or perform any real operations in space. It would be tempting to declare this mission a total failure, but this is both unfair and untrue.

Yinhuo-1 was a fairly low-cost and low-key way for China to begin its planetary exploration program. If the program is treated as an exercise in starting such a program, it should be considered successful. Chinese engineers were able to design and assemble a flight-ready spacecraft.

They forged international partnerships for acquiring instrumentation. They developed procedures for controlling the spacecraft and analyzing its data. They probably uncovered technical and procedural gremlins along the way, and learned to defeat them.

Like the tip of an iceberg, the small Yinhuo spacecraft is just one part of a larger program, with infrastructure, personnel, and knowledge. The rest of this program is on the ground, and it remains intact.