Russia doesn’t know where Mars probe crashed

Two days after a failed Mars moon probe re-entered Earth's orbit, Russian officials admit they don't know exactly where it crashed.

On Sunday, it was reported by several news agencies that parts of the craft had fallen into the Pacific Ocean. But now, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Alexei Zolotukhin tells the AP that the information was based on "calculations" and that there aren't any actual eye witness accounts of the debris landing.

The unmanned probe was carrying toxic fuel that was expected to disintegrate upon reentry into Earth's atmosphere along with most of the craft itself. The Phobos-Ground probe was originally intended to travel to one of Mars' twin moons (Phobos), collect soil samples and then fly back to Earth in 2014. The ambitious project fell short when the probe never made it out of Earth's orbit, where it had been stuck for the past two months.

news.yahoo.com...

Hmmmm, so no one saw the probe crash?

Did anyone see its re-entry trail atleast? maybe picked up up on radar as it was going down?

This whole affair sounds very strange, anyone else remember the last sat coming down, with all the ridiculous coverage and radar tracking?

Little strange....

I don't know why but these two seem related...

Blue flash

It must be harder to track these things than I realized. I assumed NORAD would be able to track something that large.

I heard that US nuclear strategy has always been first strike even though we have never admitted it. If NORAD is so limited and apparently Russia's system is also so limited, then I suppose everyone is planning to strike first.

Did Phobos-Grunt Debris Fall on Land? Op-Ed By James Oberg

January 29th, 2012

www.txchnologist.com...

Last week, the European Space Agency released its report on the crash of Russia’s ill-fated Phobos-Grunt probe on Jan. 15. In it, the ESA came to the same conclusion as the other major space players: all pieces of the probe, which was bound for one of Mars’s moons, fell safely into the Pacific Ocean.

But this consensus isn’t reasonable at all.

Instead, a sound analysis of the data by space debris experts suggests that although most of the debris did plunge into the Pacific Ocean, other debris may have fallen onto regions of Chile and possibly Argentina.