Less than two months before the scheduled launch of Russia's flagship planetary spacecraft, officials are set to recommend a delay until 2011.
The Phobos-Grunt mission aims to land on the Martian moon Phobos to collect soil samples and return them to Earth.
Sources within the Russian space industry gave RussianSpaceWeb.com details of the likely postponement.
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8254820.stm
Phobos-Grunt Mars probe loses its way just after launch
Russian engineers are fighting to save the country's latest mission to Mars.
The Phobos-Grunt probe launched successfully but then failed to fire the engine to put it on the correct path to the Red Planet.
Russian space agency officials say the craft is currently stuck in an Earth orbit and that engineers have two weeks to correct the fault before the probe's batteries run out.
The project is Russia's most ambitious space venture in recent years.
It has been designed to collect rock and dust samples from Mars' moon Phobos and bring them back for study in labs on Earth.
More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15631472
ESA coordinates international satellite reentry campaign
An international campaign to assess the imminent atmospheric reentry of Russia's Phobos–Grunt Mars craft is being coordinated by experts in ESA's Space Debris Office. Participants include NASA and Roscosmos as part of the 12-member Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee.
ESA experts are working with international partners in a coordinated prediction campaign focused on Phobos–Grunt, a Russian Mars mission that is expected to largely burn up in Earth's atmosphere in the next few days.
Phobos–Grunt was launched on 8 November 2011 into an initial Earth orbit of 206 x 341 km. The injection into an Earth-escape trajectory to Mars failed, and the spacecraft was declared lost by the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, on 13 December.
More: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Space_Debris/SEMJS2KX3XG_0.html
Russia's failed Phobos-Grunt space probe heads to Earth
Russia's failed Mars probe, Phobos-Grunt, is about to fall back to Earth - quite probably on Sunday.
The spacecraft has been losing altitude rapidly in recent days and will soon be pulled into the top of the atmosphere where it will be destroyed.
Phobos-Grunt weighed some 13 tonnes at launch, but very little of this mass should make it through to the surface.
Russian space agency (Roscosmos) estimates suggest perhaps only 200kg will survive the fiery plunge.
More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16491457
Lots of detailed info here:
http://celestrak.com/events/reentry/phobos-grunt.asp
Latest estimate (at 13:30 Saturday) for re-entry is 2012 Jan 17 10:04:25 UTC - a 99% confidence interval gives it plus or minus a day - so there's still huge uncertainty.
Maybe it will fall over Bromley?
It will fall in the Pacific off Chile tonight
If it comes down tonight, we have a small chance of seeing it.
Latest TLE is here:
http://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/phobos-grunt.txt
[TLE = Two Line Element - it shows the orbital parameters]
Using this TLE, Heavens Above is currently predicting flypasts at:
19:48
21:18
22:49
Well worth checking Heavens Above in case this is updated and well worth being outside to view at these times - if it hasn't already re-entered :-)
Ground track here:
http://reentrynews.aero.org/2011065a.html
Mark
It fell to earth before reaching us:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16491457
Phobos-Grunt: Failed probe 'falls over Pacific'
Orbital tracking reports suggest Russia's failed Mars probe, Phobos-Grunt, fell back to Earth on Sunday, to be destroyed over the Pacific.
Both Russian and US military 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.
More: See link in Mark's post above. ;)