Phobos-Grunt, the 13-ton, US$ 170 million Russian space probe that was launched into orbit and promptly crippled by failed auxiliary engines, is due to crash back onto Earth soon. Russian space authorities have named January 15th as the likely re-entry date. In case you thought that your fears of high-speed orbital debris ended with 2011.

It’s been a pretty bad couple of months for people trying to do things in space, all told. The German ROSAT re-entered the atmosphere back in September, shortly after NASA’s UARS satellite fell down to earth; fortunately, neither of these downed satellites caused any sort of harm, or even got close to causing any sort of harm. With all hope of recovering Phobos-Grunt gone, the Russian satellite is expected to go down in much the same way.

Even so, between 20 and 30 pieces of Phobos-Grunt are expected to survive re-entry and reach earth’s surface, scattered anywhere between 51 degrees north and 51 degrees south latitude. Which is a pretty wide bit of territory. It’s mostly water, but if you need an excuse to stay at home on January the 15th, the Russian space authority has given it you.

[Source: PopScience]