Well...


So much for WW-III. I know many here will either dismiss this report and some will feel vindicated over this announcement. Either way, I thought it was worth posting


Take it for what it's worth.

The theory that Russia’s Mars mission failed due to emissions from a U.S. radar is extremely “exotic,” Russian scientists said on Tuesday.

Phobos-Grunt, Russia's most ambitious planetary mission in decades, was launched on November 9 but it was lost due to a propulsion failure and fell back to Earth on Sunday. Soon after the failed launch, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said a rocket motor should have started up to push the probe into higher orbit, but it failed to fire for unknown reasons.

The crash could have been caused by a powerful electromagnetic emission from a U.S. radar in the Pacific Ocean, which could have interfered with the probe's electronics, Kommersant daily reported earlier on Tuesday citing an unnamed source in the Russian space industry. The source stressed that it was more likely an accident rather than an act of sabotage.

Phobos-Grunt, Russia's most ambitious planetary mission in decades, was launched on November 9 but it was lost due to a propulsion failure and fell back to Earth on Sunday. Soon after the failed launch, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said a rocket motor should have started up to push the probe into higher orbit, but it failed to fire for unknown reasons.

The source stressed that it was more likely an accident rather than an act of sabotage.

He suggested the theory was just a blind to cover up some people’s mistakes.

According to NASA, Russia has failed in all 17 of its attempts to study the Red Planet close-up since 1960. The most recent failure before November 2011 occurred in 1996, when Russia lost its Mars-96 orbiter during launch.

Consider the power of the impact. I don’t think the Americans have radars capable of ensuring such power at such an altitude [about 200 kilometers],” said Alexander Zakharov of the Russian Academy of Sciences Space Research Institute, where the Phobos equipment and research program were developed.

From: Moscow (AFP) Feb 14, 2011

The Russian space agency suggested Monday that a foreign power may have been behind the space accident that disabled one of the country's most modern military satellites earlier this month.

Russia on February 1 launched a high-tech Geo-IK-2 craft to help the military draw a three-dimensional map of the Earth and locate the precise positions of various targets.

News reports said the satellite was a vital part of Russia's effort to match the United States and NATO's ability to target its missiles from space.

But the craft briefly went missing after its launch only to re-emerge in a wrong orbit that left the craft unable to complete its assigned task.