Not sure if it was Roscosmos or ESA that aired it first, but it seems that the Phobos-Grunt already plunged into the Pacific, in the coast of
Chile:
Russian, US and European sources announced the demise of the craft within minutes of each other.
It brings to an end the sorry story of this mission, which promised to return rocky samples from Mars' biggest moon. Instead, after its launch in
November, Phobos-Grunt could not get more than 345km from Earth before stalling.
Once it became clear that controllers could not establish contact with the probe and diagnose its faults, a fiery dive back to Earth was inevitable.
The spacecraft's last orbit took it over Japan, and the Solomon Islands, and to the east of Australia and New Zealand.
Conflicting reports then had the final re-entry point across a great swathe of the Southern Ocean. Certainly, it seems Phobos-Grunt was down and
destroyed before it could have passed over Chile.
www.bbc.co.uk...
Better we wait 24 or 48 hrs, because NASA said that the UARS crashed "somewhere in the Pacific" in a Sunday like that, and less than 24 hrs later,
"something" falling from the sky hit, destroyed an entire housing block in Monte Grande, Argentina and killed one or two people...