Official News page 8

REAL LIFE NEWS: PHOBOS-GRUNT FRAGMENTS FALL TO EARTH

by Hazed

Speaking of things plummeting to Earth from space, the duff space probe Phobos-Grunt which was supposed to head for the Martian moon, but failed to do anything much once it made it into Earth orbit, is due to burn up in the atmosphere right about now.

In fact, by the time you read this, it may already have rained chunks of dead spaceprobe onto our heads! See this article for details.

In a bizarre twist, following the failure of scientists to revive the stricken probe, the head of Russia's space agency, Vladimir Popovkin, alleged that foul play was behind the problems: "We don't want to accuse anybody, but there are very powerful devices that can influence spacecraft now. The possibility they were used cannot be ruled out," he said, as reported by the New York Times. His insinuation was that the US was to blame - and not just for Phobos-Grunt's washout. He continued, "The frequent failure of our space launches, which occur at a time when they are flying over the part of Earth not visible from Russia, where we do not see the spacecraft and do not receive telemetric information, are not clear to us."

Wow. Is this the return of cold war paranoia? I hope not.

New Scientist magazine has an interesting article arguing that although the US has the capability to mess up Russia's space probes, it has no reason to do so - and plenty of reasons not to. You can read it here.

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