November 17, 1996. Web posted at: 8:15 a.m. EST (1315 GMT)
MOSCOW (Reuter) -- A Russian space probe launched on a mission to Mars ran into problems after liftoff and officials said Sunday it would probably re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and burn up.
"We've got a problem. The probe had been due to leave the Earth's orbit last night, but it is still there," said Vladimir Ananyev, a spokesman for the Russian Space Agency.
"The specialists are still working ... but it's probably too late," he said.
An official at the Space Communication Center in Crimea later told journalists the probe was not likely to last long.
"It will probably soon enter the Earth's atmosphere and cease to exist," Vladimir Molodtsov, deputy flight manager and head of the control team, was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.
The probe could spend a maximum of 30 days orbiting Earth. Another official said the team, which had lost contact with the craft, would continue trying to trace it.
"We will carry on looking for it for days," flight manager Konstantin Sukhanov told Reuters by telephone from the center.
The six-ton probe, which lifted off from Kazakhstan's Baikonur space center on Saturday at 11:48 p.m. Moscow time (2048 GMT), had been due to reach Mars on September 12 next year.
Interfax quoted Molodtsov as saying the fault occurred when booster rockets on the fourth stage failed to ignite.
"Experts think the booster rocket failed in its second ignition while the spacecraft was in the shadow zone. It should have cut in over the Atlantic, in the area of the Gulf of Guinea," the agency said.
Ekho Moskvy radio suggested that underfunding of the project might be to blame.
Russia's Mars-96 mission was launched two years behind schedule due to cash shortages in its hard-pressed space sector.
The probe is carrying 1.1 tons of scientific equipment from 20 European countries and the United States.
The radio said scientists working on the project had only received emergency money from the government after pressure from the other countries involved. As a result the project had to be rushed, leaving room for mistakes.
Molodtsov told journalists at the Space Communication Center in the Crimean town of Yevpatoriya that the first ignition had been successful and the craft had then entered the shadow zone.
Contact was established with the spacecraft after it emerged from the shadow zone, but 12 minutes later than scheduled. It was maintained for three minutes, and then lost.
The $64 million Russian mission is the second of three planned trips from Earth to Mars in just over a month. The United States launched one robot voyage to the Red Planet two weeks ago and a second mission will blast off on December 2.
All were tasked to check for signs of water on the far-away planet -- a key clue to whether there was once life on Mars.
The Russian probe includes two dart-like penetrators designed to pierce the Martian soil and take samples from below ground level and beam information back to the orbiting probe.
November 18, 1996 Web posted at: 11:00 a.m. EST (1600 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Its purpose was to explore the Red Planet.It ended up in the Pacific Ocean.
The crippled Russian Mars space probe fell to Earth at about 0130 GMT Monday (8:30 p.m. Sunday EST), the United States Space Command said.
Alan Hodges, director general of Emergency Management Australia, later told reporters it landed 620 miles (about 1,000 kilometers) west of South America, near Easter Island, at 31 degrees south, 96 degrees 30 minutes west at 0134 GMT Monday (8:34 p.m. EST).
Emergency Management Australia is the federal agency that coordinates emergency services nationwide.
The U.S. Space Command, known as SPACECOM, confirmed that the probe re-entered Earth's atmosphere in the southern Pacific west of Chile. But officials said there was no way to tell whether any of it survived reentry. SPACECOM had been tracking the probe since it faltered in Earth's orbit.
The Chilean Navy had received no official word of the crash, but recovery of any debris from the spacecraft would be difficult if not impossible because of the ocean's 18,000-foot depth, a Chilean naval officer said. "This area has one of the deepest ocean floors in the world. Any kind of recovery, if it were possible, would be very, very tough," the officer told Reuters.
Originally, the unmanned six-ton craft was expected to crash in east-central Australia.
The Mars probe, which failed soon after launch Saturday night, carried four small radioactive plutonium-powered energy generators, or "batteries," which were to power robotic landing vehicles.
[...]
The Mars probe, carrying scientific equipment from the U.S. and 20 European countries, had been scheduled to reach Mars in September, 1997.