Picturing Phobos-Grunt’s Sad Final Days
Thursday, January 12th, 2012
Looking more like a religious icon than a once-ambitious interplanetary probe, Phobos-Grunt is getting renewed attention as it approaches its upcoming crash.
German researchers captured this fiery image of the ill-fated Russian Mars probe, Phobos-Grunt. It doesn’t actually look like this. Yet.
The radar image was captured by the Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques. No word on why the scientists decided that campfire-orange was the best tint to give the digital image.
Regardless, Phobos will indeed be that color in three to five days, when it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere. Paranoia surrounding the failed mission goes beyond worries about being hit on the head by flaming debris. Some think Phobos was attacked by U.S. energy beams.
