Report: Russia’s Phobos Grunt Probe to Fall to Earth January 15 - International Business Times

Russia's stranded Phobos Grunt spacecraft could fall to Earth on January 15, according to the spokesman of Russia's military space forces.

Spokesman Alexei Zolotukhin told Russian news agencies that fragments of Russia's stranded Mars probe Phobos-Grunt could fall to Earth on January 15.

"As of Wednesday morning, the fragments of Phobos-Grunt are expected to fall January 15, 2012. The final date could change due to external factors," said spokesman Alexei Zolotukhin.

In November, the military space forces" monitoring centre had predicted that the probewould fall to Earth in January or February.

Between 20 to 30 fragments of the Phobos Grunt spacecraft are expected to fall to Earth, but Russian space officials said the spacecraft's highly toxic fuel will burn up on entering the Earth's atmosphere.

Earlier, a Russian space official said that while the 13.5 ton probe, which is carrying highly toxic fuel, could also crash into the earth, it is impossible to predict the exact position of such an event.

"The crash area of any craft can only be estimated in the final 24 hours," said Vitaly Davydov, deputy head of Roscosmos in the first official acknowledgment on failed probe Davydov said. "Before then, saying what will fall and where is pointless."

Russia launched the Phobos-Grunt research probe to the Martian moon Phobos on Nov. 9, in an attempt to reinvigorate its interplanetary program which had not seen a successful mission since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Because of the failed probe, Davydov said that in the future Russia may just focus on sending probes to the Earth's moon and researching on Mars in cooperation with its international partners.

It will be recalled that towards the end of 2010, Russia's already troubled space industry was further shaken by the failure of the Proton rocket sending a trio of GLONASS satellites, costing more than $138 million, to crash down into the ocean.

This was followed by the failed launch of the Rockot booster, which left a new-generation Geo-IK-2 military satellite in a useless orbit.

In August 2011 the agency again suffered the loss of the Ekspress-AM4 communications satellite and the unprecedented crash of a Progress cargo ship heading to the International Space Station.

Then came the Phobos-Grunt fiasco which is expected to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere next week