A Russian space probe that was intended for a two-and-a-half-year mission to one of Mars' moons will be falling to Earth just over two months into its failed mission. According to an AP report, the Phobos-Ground probe that was originally launched on November 9 on a mission to take soil samples from the Mars moon Phobos instead became stuck in the Earth's orbit and flight controllers on Earth were unable to get it back on the right path.
The Phobos-Ground orbit began to deteriorate and it was believed the space junk would crash land sometime between December and February. Now Russian officials have set a more precise date of January 15 for the probe to fall back to Earth.
The 14.6 ton spacecraft carries about 12 tons of toxic fuel but officials believe the fuel will burn up as it enters the Earth's atmosphere, if the fuel isn't frozen. Any of the fuel that may have frozen during the failed mission could survive re-entry.
This throwaway of space junk is just the latest in recent months of space crafts falling back to Earth.
UARS
In September, the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) crashed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean after several days of tension during which NASA officials were uncertain where the UARS would make its re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. At one point, it was believe that UARS could crash land somewhere over North America.
ROSAT
October brought the German ROSAT craft crashing into Asia's Bay of Bengal. This piece of space junk narrowly thankfully fell short of crashing into the highly-populated Chinese cities of Chongqing and Chengdu which were northeast of the projected path.
Mir Space Station
In March 2001, the Russian space station Mir took a fiery nosedive into the Earth's atmosphere in a planned ditching of the craft. The space station made a final flight into the South Pacific near Fiji, amid a spectacular light display and sonic booms.
Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory
In June 2000, the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory was intentionally ditched in a controlled crash by NASA. The deorbit of this craft was due to a malfunctioning gyroscope and if another gyroscope failed on the craft, an uncontrolled re-entry with potentially disastrous results could have been the end story. What didn't disintegrate fell into the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii and was recovered.
Skylab
Perhaps most famous among crashing space junk is the July 1979 re-entry of the American space station Skylab. Officials originally announced that Skylab had crash-landed in the Indian Ocean in the morning hours of July 12 but in fact, pieces of the craft rained down upon the Western Australia town of Esperance.
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