Last week, the European Space Agency released its report on the crash of Russia’s ill-fated Phobos-Grunt probe on Jan. 15. In it, the ESA came to the same conclusion as the other major space players: all pieces of the probe, which was bound for one of Mars’s moons, fell safely into the Pacific Ocean.
But this consensus isn’t reasonable at all.
Instead, a sound analysis of the data by space debris experts suggests that although most of the debris did plunge into the Pacific Ocean, other debris may have fallen onto regions of Chile and possibly Argentina.
This debris on land likely included the heaviest pieces, possibly even the heat-shielded return capsule carrying three bio-canisters – one from the U.S. Planetary Society and two others from the Russians, that organisms that were to test the “transpermia” hypothesis. Slowed by air drag, they would have hit the ground with speeds of only a few hundred miles per hour.
via Txchnologist
January 30, 2012
