Fall Of Phobos-Grunt Into The Atmosphere Imminent [Greg Laden's Blog]

Thirteen tons of space ship once destine for the planet Mars is starting to lose altitude, and may drop into the thicker layer of the atmosphere and (mostly) burn up Sunday (story at bbc). The Russian space agency estimates that about 200 kilograms will make it to the ground. It is impossible to predict this far in advance where any of that might fall.

You can track Phobos-Grunt here, but that tracking tool does not give you the location of the object; It shows you where it should be based on calculations. Once Phobos-Grunt starts to interact with the thicker atmosphere and, perhaps, bits and chunks start to fall off, the trajectory will probably change and this tracking map will no longer be that useful, and probably won’t tell you if the space craft has crashed yet.

The original mission was to go to Mars and pick up some samples and bring them back. The space ship made it into earth orbit, but for unknown reasons, a booster designed to push the craft towards the Red Planet failed to fire. This of course makes this re-entry interesting in a novel way: Since the booster didn’t fire, there’s about 10 tons of rocket fuel in aluminum tanks on Phobos-Grunt. It is assumed the tanks will melt quickly and the fuel will burn or explode.

I wonder if this will make re-entry more visible than otherwise?

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