Phobos-Grunt to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere between Sunday and Monday
13 Jan 2012
The Russian Phobos-Grunt mission, stuck in Earth’s orbit since a launch anomaly on 9 November 2011, is predicted to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere between Sunday 15 January and Monday 16 January.
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Phobos-Grunt.
Credit: Roscosmos.
The spacecraft, designed to go to Mars and its moon Phobos, was launched on 8 November 2011 on a two-stage Zenit rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan but was unable to fire the engine that would set it on its course.
The orbital inclination of Phobos-Grunt is such that the ground track over the Earth extends from 51.4 degrees N (line of latitude which in the UK runs approximately from Cardiff to London) to 51.4 degrees S (as far south as the Falkland Islands).The complex will fall to Earth somewhere between these latitudes.
Most of the spacecraft will break-up/burn-up on re-entry. The aluminium fuel tanks are expected to melt and the unused fuel destroyed/dispersed in the upper atmosphere. In all likelihood, no discernible damage will result from the re-entry, and like UARS and ROSAT before it, Phobos-Grunt will fall unobserved in a remote area or ocean.
