Russia's Phobos-Grunt will fall to Afghanistan

The Russian probe Phobos-Grunt, trapped in Earth orbit, will fall to southwestern Afghanistan on January 14, 2012, according to the US Strategic Command's forecast.

Yesterday (December 26), the US Strategic Command said that the Russian Mars probe Phobos-Grunt would most likely fall into the Earth's atmosphere, at 22:27 (international time GMT). on January 14, 2012, in an area near the Mirabad city of Afghanistan.

Earlier, the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) predicted that the Phobos-Grunt probe could fall between January 6, 2012 and January 19, 2012. The area of ​​this probe may fall to a large extent including the US, China, Africa, Australia, Japan, the Middle East, western Europe, Ukraine and a small part of Russia's territory.

According to RIA Novosti , Roscosmos also added that they could only predict the exact time and place of the Phobos-Grunt probe a few days before it flew into the Earth's atmosphere.

The unmanned probe ship Phobos-Grunt was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, on 20 November at 8:16 am (GMT). The main mission of the Phobos-Grunt is to take physical samples from Mars's Phobos moon and bring them back to Earth in 2014.

However, the Phobos-Grunt probe's propulsion engine could not be fired in order to take the ship toward Mars, after separating from the rocket. The probe has been trapped in Earth's orbit since then, despite all attempts by communications experts from the European Space Agency and the Russian Space Agency.