Mission to Mars impossible?

[jakeXT]

Source: RT

Almost no hope left to save Russia’s Phobos-Grunt interplanetary mission to Mars, as attempts to re-establish contact with it failed. Some say, in theory it may be destroyed by a rocket to prevent it falling back to Earth.

..

Following a successful launch from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and the subsequent separation of the Phobos-Grunt probe from its booster rocket on Wednesday morning, its own engine failed to generate two impulses which were necessary to direct the spacecraft onto a path to Mars. As a consequence, the probe became stuck in a low transitory orbit above Earth.

...

The great fall: where exactly?
­So, the latest reports say Phobos-Grunt is most likely to fall back to earth. But where? That is still a question to be answered. If the engine fails to run, the fragments that do not burn in the dense atmosphere, may fall down almost anywhere on Earth – in the US, China or somewhere in Africa or the Middle East, as well as in Europe or Australia, Japan or Russia. That is according to a Russian ballistic expert who spoke to the Ria Novosti news agency on conditions of anonymity.


...

A source in the spacecraft industry said that the failure of the interplanetary mission may result in the sacking of several top Roscosmos officials.

Read more: http://rt.com/news/mission-rocket-spacecraft-phobos-117/

[Devil_Fish]

1. Great, Just what we need: More Space Junk. NT

[jakeXT]

2. I hope MSL with it's plutonium on board will make it in 2 weeks

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

[kenfrequed]

3. chalk another mars mission off

To the Great galactic ghoul.

[astral]

4. We need to work on the state of human kind down HERE and go to Mars..

some generations later when we're all growed-up. Maybe by then we won't need to / want to.