Russia believes fragments of its Phobos-Grunt probe, which spiraled back to Earth after failing to head on a mission to Mars, crashed on Sunday into the Pacific Ocean, a spokesperson for its space forces said.
The splashdown marks an inglorious if spectacular end for the Phobos-Grunt probe, which Russia launched in November last year and hoped would scoop up a sample from Mars’ largest moon, Phobos, and bring it back to Earth.
“According to information from mission control of the space forces, the fragments of Phobos Grunt should have fallen into the Pacific Ocean at 17:45 GMT,” spokesperson Alexei Zolotukhin told the Interfax news agency.
PREDICTIONS
There was no immediate comment from Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, which throughout the day as the probe approached Earth, had given wildly different predictions about where it could land.
Zolotukhin said that the space forces had closely followed the probe’s course.
“This has allowed us to ascertain the place and time of the fall of the craft with a great degree of accuracy,” he told Interfax.
According to the ITAR-TASS news agency, the probe should have splashed down 1,250km west of the island of Wellington off the coast of Chile.
A landing in the ocean would be a huge relief for Russia after earlier reports suggested it could crash into the territory of South America, possibly Argentina.
However, in a sign that the final crash site had yet to be confirmed, the RIA Novosti news agency quoted Russian ballistics experts as saying Phobos-Grunt had splashed down into the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of Brazil.
STUCK IN ORBIT
Rather than heading out on the expedition to Mars, Phobos-Grunt, after its Nov. 9 launch, became stuck in an Earth orbit that became lower and lower as it became increasingly tugged by the Earth’s gravity.
The unmanned US$165 million vessel is one of the largest objects to re-enter the atmosphere since Russia brought down the Soviet-era Mir space station in 2001.
Sky gazers reported the gold-colored vessel emitting a bright orange glow as it traversed the globe in an eastward direction between London to the north and New Zealand to the south.
Roscosmos predicted that only 20 or 30 segments weighing no more than 200km in total would survive the explosive re-entry and actually hit the Earth’s surface.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS