Russians Claim Sabotage Caused Toxic Probe’s Mysterious Crash, Space Debris a Continued Threat

America seems to be to blame for a lot these days, and yesterday’s mysterious crash of the failed Russian Mars probe Phobos-Grunt is no exception. The head of the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos publicly suggested that the cause of the failure might have been sabotage by foreign interests, though he declined to specify the who, what and why of the agitators supposedly responsible for the $145M space disaster.

Further concern has grown over the fact that no one knows exactly where this 440-pound craft has landed. After the last pre-crash report by Roscosmos put the debris landing in the Gobi Desert of China, Russia’s news agency Ria Novosti reported that military sources said it went down in the Pacific ocean, west of Chile. However there soon emerged conflicting reports that Brazil was where the craft should have landed.

Who cares where it landed? Well, its payload includes between seven and eleven tons of toxic nitrogen tetroxide and hydrazine fuel. Just as with the 10 micrograms of radioactive Cobalt-57 on board, the Russian space agency says these materials are no threat to us.

Had the probe not plummeted to earth and rather failed in orbit as a number of satellites do, it would have joined the 15,000 pieces of space debris which are blanketing low Earth orbit. As such crafts become less expensive to manufacture and launch (though by no means inexpensive), they obviously multiply. The debris field has already reached the state where a massive satellite disruption is not an if but when.

The scenario gets really scary when you start considering the implications of even a single orbiting satellite being destroyed. Even if we luck out and avoid a major disaster in the near future, there is always the possibility of, as Russia would appreciate, “foreign sabotage”. David Wright, PhD a senior scientist and co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), paints the dour outlook of a satellite attack:

Any major disruption of the world’s satellite systems could quickly result in the end of the world as we know it, as global communications systems break down and military intelligence blacks out. The destabilizing effect of losing satellite support would rock our civilization to its knees. With all the junk in space right now, we’re already rolling the dice. This is certainly more of a concern than the errant satellite falling to Earth. Watch the skies!