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Oops! Radar may have caused space crash
A US radar stationed on the Marshall Islands may have inadvertently disabled Russia's Mars probe, which crashed into the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, Kommersant newspaper reported, citing an unidentified Russian space official.

The radar may have jammed electronic communications with the $163 million Phobos-Grunt craft as it monitored asteroid movements, the official said, according to the Moscow-based newspaper, adding that this would have happened unintentionally.

The Phobos-Grunt probe, designed to return soil samples from one of the two Martian moons, became stuck in low-earth orbit after its November 9 launch.

"Grunt" is Russian for soil.

It is the latest setback after Russia celebrated the 50th anniversary of sending a man into orbit last year.

In August, the country lost its most powerful telecommunications satellite and a cargo-supply ship destined for the International Space Station.

Yuriy Ivanov, a Defence Ministry spokesman, dismissed earlier reports the fragments may have fallen into the Atlantic.

Roscosmos chief, Vladimir Popovkin, told Izvestia newspaper on January 10 that outside interference may be to blame for the series of mission failures.

"I don’t want to blame anyone, but today there are powerful means to affect the trajectory of spacecraft, and we can’t exclude that these have been deployed," Mr Popovkin told the Moscow-based daily.
While Phobos was an almost entirely new model and carried a higher risk of malfunction, the two earlier failures stemmed from "simple shoddiness" Mr Popovkin said.

Prosecutors blamed human error for the two failed space launches, blaming both incidents on negligence.

Russia’s failure to launch the probe to Mars dealt a "heavy blow" to the country's space industry, which may spend 2 trillion rubles ($64 billion) between 2016 and 2025 as it eyes a manned mission to the moon, according to Mr Popovkin.
Bloomberg Article @ the Age