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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8963402/Russian-spacecraft-to-crash.html

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Russian Spacecraft To Crash

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A Russian space probe weighing almost as much as two double-decker buses is set to come crashing back to Earth in the New Year.

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The 13.2 tonne Phobos-Grunt spacecraft was launched in November bound for Mars but engine problems saw it becoming stranded in the Earth's orbit. Despite repeated attempts to restart the spacecraft, engineers were unable to make contact.


Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, said it would be impossible to calculate exactly where it would land until just a few days before its re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere but warned up to 30 pieces could survive re-entry to hit the earth.


It is expected to hit Earth any time between January 6 and 19, and is known to contain 11 tonnes of toxic rocket fuel and 10kg of radioactive cobalt-57.


Some experts have warned that if the on-board fuel, nitrogen tetroxide and hydrazine, has frozen while in orbit some of it could still survive the re-entry process.


Roscosmos insists there will be little threat to people on the ground, with most of the dangerous material still likely to be incinerated during re-entry.


They said they are expecting fragments of the probe to fall to Earth anywhere between 51.4 degrees north of the Equator and 51.4 degrees south, covering much of the planet’s most densely populated areas.


Phobos-Grunt, which cost more than £100m to build, was designed to collect rock samples from the Martian moon, Phobos during a two and a half year mission.


Having launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, it separated from its booster rocket 11 minutes in, but failed to fire out of Earth’s orbit.


This is the latest in a series of Russian launch failures that have raised concerns over the state of space industries in the country.


Engineers in Russia and the European Space Agency had tried to propel the spacecraft away from the Earth’s orbit, but were unsuccessful.


Earlier this year, debris from a falling Nasa satellite approximately half the size also came crashing to Earth. No one was hurt.


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