The uncontrolled reentry of Russia's stranded Phobos-Grunt spacecraft presented a moving target to satellite trackers just days before pieces of the botched Mars mission were expected to fall to Earth. The Russian space agency Roscosmos said Jan. 12 that while much of the 13,200-kg (6,000-lb.) spacecraft was likely to burn up during a fiery atmospheric reentry Jan. 15, as many as 30 chunks of the unmanned probe were expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere over a patch of the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa. However, the prediction came less than 24 hr. after Russia forecast the spacecraft's reentry over the opposite side of the ocean, just west of Indonesia.
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