Point and shoot is not an acceptable launch pattern, Russia!

A 13-ton, US$ 170 million Russian space probe that was launched on Wednesday, due for a rendezvous with one of Mars’ moons, has had a system fail before it even left earth’s orbit. Amateur astronomers spotted the craft limping along in high orbit when a series of booster pulses that would have shot it off towards the red planet, failed to do so.

A few minutes later…

Eh, so what? Earth’s upper atmosphere is clogged by hundreds of thousands of fragments of space debris, all floating around up there not bothering anyone, you say? True, except the major concern here is the Phobos Ground craft is carrying several tons of highly toxic propulsion fuel, that pose a serious ecological risk if/when the probe comes crashing back to earth, which is due to happen in less than a week unless Russian scientists can solve the systems problem, which itself is looking less and less likely.

The Russian Federation space authorities are trying to play down the risk, claiming that even if (if! ha!) the probe does re-enter the atmosphere on an uncontrolled dive, the fuel load will likely (likely?!) burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere.

Less chatting and more secondary propulsion system checking! немедленно!

James Oberg, a NASA veteran who has written extensively on the Russian Space programme before and after the fall of communism, begs to differ, pointing out that the fuel load on that probe, should it tumble from the skies, could make it “the most dangerous spacecraft ever to fall from earth orbit.”

He says:

About seven tons of nitrogen teroxide and hydrazine, which could freeze before ultimately entering, will make it the most toxic falling satellite ever… what was billed as the heaviest interplanetary probe ever may become one of the heaviest space derelicts to ever fall back to Earth out of control.

So reassuring, thanks Russia. Seems we don’t need asteroids to threaten to clobber us from space, we’re doing a great job of that all by ourselves.

[Thanks, Mathew S]

[Source: Yahoo]