Right now, Phobos-Grunt, perhaps the most ambitious Mars mission in history, is stuck in a low-Earth orbit and in an orientation that makes communication with, and control from, Earth all but an impossibility. In the current situation, Phobos-Grunt faces an all but certain fiery doom as it re-enters the atmosphere early next month. However, the probe may not be a total loss as some analysts are saying that it may wind up having a purpose: improving satellite fall predictions.
Last fall, Earth was gripped by the news that two large satellites were going to make an uncontrolled fall from orbit: NASA's UARS and Germany's ROSAT. Fortunately, despite many pieces of the satellites surviving to impact Earth's surface no one was hurt and no damage was done. However, if the falls had taken place just a few hours either way of when they did, populated areas could have been in the fall zone.
Now, looking to make lemonade out of a monster lemon, the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, of which Russia's Rocosmos is a member, is looking to use the doomed Mars probe as a test object to better predict satellite falls.
However, there are a lot of unknowns, too.
First of all, despite the Cold War being over for 20 years, Russia is not all that forthcoming with specific details of Phobos-Grunt's construction. If Rocosmos would release such information, better predictions could be made in regards to determining how much of the satellite could survive the complete fall back to Earth. Similarly, the piggybacked Chinese probe, Yinghou 1 is a virtual mystery when it comes to its build specifications.
In the end, though, as was the case with UARS and ROSAT, experts are advising that there is no real reason for worry. Yes, the possibility of getting hit with a piece of falling space junk is present, the odds of it actually happening are very, very small as in over 50 years of space exploration (and falling junk), this has never before happened.
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