Russian spacecraft to crash soon, risks unclear

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian space probe designed to burnish the nation's faded space glory in a mission to one of Mars' moons has turned into one of the heaviest, most toxic pieces of space junk ever.

It will come crashing down to Earth in just a few days.

The Russian space agency Roscosmos' latest forecast has the unmanned Phobos-Ground probe falling out of Earth's orbit Sunday or Monday, with the median time placing it over the Indian Ocean just north of Madagascar. It said the precise time and place of its uncontrolled plunge can only be determined later, and unless someone actually spots fiery streaks in the sky, no one may ever know where any surviving pieces end up.

Space experts agree it's unlikely to pose big risks.

At 13.2 metric tons (14.6 tons), the Phobos-Ground is one of the largest spacecraft ever to plummet to Earth, considerably larger than the two defunct satellites that fell to Earth last fall and landed in the water.

Roscosmos predicted that only between 20 and 30 fragments of the Phobos probe with a total weight of up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds) will survive the re-entry and plummet to Earth.

It's the third satellite to crash out of the sky in under five months: An old NASA 6-ton atmospheric research satellite came tumbling down in September, and a 3-ton German science satellite followed suit in October. But both were well past their prime.

Russia's Phobos-Ground probe is still a mere babe. It was launched in November, and a glitch left it stranded in orbit around Earth instead of bound for Mars to collect soil samples.

"What's different about this re-entry is that it's not a re-entry of an old, inert satellite that just was expected for years. It's something that is coming down because of an accident ... for me, that puts it in a different category," said Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.

Another striking difference is the 11 metric tons (12 tons) of highly toxic rocket fuel aboard Phobos-Ground, accounting for the bulk of its weight for the long journey to the Martian moon of Phobos. This makes it potentially the most toxic spacecraft to fall ever.

Roscosmos insists all the fuel will burn in the atmosphere and pose no danger, and some experts in Russia and the West share that forecast.

And if it's any consolation, both of the two previous uncontrolled satellites harmlessly showered fragments over water.

"The fuel indeed poses lethal danger in case of close contact, but I haven't heard of a single case of any civilians poisoned by rocket fuel from all the derelict satellites and failed rockets throughout the space era," said Igor Lissov, an independent Moscow-based space observer. "The objective reality is that it burns on re-entry. There is no reason to panic."

Some experts theorized, however, that part of the fuel might have frozen in the cold of space and could survive the fiery descent, posing a strong threat if it spills over populated areas. Such fears prompted the United States to shoot down its USA-193 spy satellite with a Navy missile in 2008.

Some botched Russian rocket launches in the past have showered fragments over populated areas in Siberia and neighboring Kazakhstan.

In the latest such mishap, fragments of a Russian satellite that failed to enter a designated orbit after its launch last month came down around Novosibirsk, the third-largest Russian city with a population of about 1.5 million, damaging some houses but hurting no one. The fragments of the Meridian satellite, however, fell from a lower altitude at a far slower speed than the Phobos-Ground debris will have on re-entry.

Engineers from the Moscow-based company NPO Lavochkin, which built the Mars probe, said in an article giving a detailed description of the design that its fuel tanks are made of aluminum alloy. That means they should melt early on re-entry, backing up official assurances that the fuel would burn up on its way down.

McDowell said the probability is low that a large lump of toxic stuff will prove hazardous.

He noted that some of the probe's equipment is dense and could survive re-entry, but added the odds are that any surviving pieces will wind up in the ocean.

"All the best rules in the world" put in place to prevent uncontrolled satellites from crashing down do little if any good in the event of a launch failure, McDowell said. "This is always going to be the risk that something breaks, and you end up with a situation like this. You can minimize it, but you can't prevent it entirely."

The $170-million Phobos-Ground mission was Russia's most expensive and the most ambitious space endeavor since Soviet times. The spacecraft was intended to land on the crater-dented, potato-shaped Martian moon, collect soil samples and fly them back to Earth, giving scientists precious materials that could shed more light on the genesis of the solar system.

The probe was successfully launched Nov. 9 and entered a preliminary orbit where its engines were supposed to fire to set it on its path to Mars. They never did, and attempts to fix the glitch by Russian and European Space Agency experts failed.

Russia's space chief has acknowledged the Phobos-Ground mission was ill-prepared and risks of its failure were high, but said that Roscosmos had to give it the go-ahead so as not to miss the limited Earth-to-Mars launch window.

Phobos-Ground marked Russia's first planned foray beyond Earth's orbit since a botched 1996 robotic mission to Mars. That probe, designed by the same Lavochkin company, crashed shortly after launch due to an engine failure. The firm also built two other Phobos-bound probes that failed in 1988.

The crash of Mars-96 generated strong international fears because of some 200 grams of plutonium onboard. The craft eventually showered its fragments over the Chile-Bolivia border in the Andes Mountains, and the pieces were never recovered.

Russian officials continue to insist the craft plunged into the Pacific, their way of deflecting criticism for not warning the inhabitants of the impact area and for failing to search for plutonium and other debris.

Fears of radiation also were sparked by the fall of a nuclear-powered Soviet spy satellite that crashed over northwestern Canada in January 1978. The Soviets claimed the craft completely burned on re-entry, but a massive recovery effort by Canadian authorities recovered a dozen fragments, most of which were radioactive.

The Phobos-Ground contains a tiny quantity of the radioactive metal Cobalt-57 in one of its instruments, but Roscosmos said it poses no threat of radioactive contamination.

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AP Aerospace Writer Marcia Dunn contributed from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

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Some crew still aboard burning Russian nuclear sub

MOSCOW (AP) — A major fire aboard a docked Russian nuclear submarine that injured seven crew members with toxic fumes and left others stuck inside the vessel appeared to be brought under control on Friday, and officials said the blaze had caused no radiation leaks.

The fire began Thursday at an Arctic shipyard where the submarine Yekaterinburg was in drydock. At midday Friday, Russian state television showed the rubber-coated hull of the submarine still smoldering, with firefighters gathering around it and some standing on top to douse it with water.

An unspecified number of crew have remained inside the submarine, Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. He insisted there was no danger of fire spreading inside the sub and said the crew has reported that the conditions on board have remained normal. Konashenkov's statement left it unclear whether the crew were trapped there or ordered to stay inside.

The Defense Ministry and the Foreign Ministry said there has been no radiation leak from the fire.

The Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority said it has received information from both civil and military authorities in Russia that there was no radioactive leak. The Norwegian agency said it has not measured any increased radioactivity, adding it is following the situation closely.

However, the governor in Finnmark, Norway's northeastern province that borders Russia's Murmansk Oblast, told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that he was disappointed with Russia's response. "There have been problems to get clear information from the Russian side," Gunnar Kjoennoey was quoted as saying. "We have an agreement to exchange information in such cases, but there has been no information from the Russian side so far."

Russia's military says the blaze started on wooden scaffolding and then engulfed the sub's outer hull. It said the vessel's nuclear reactor had been shut down and its nuclear-tipped missiles and other weapons had been unloaded before the repairs.

Toxic fumes from the blaze had spread to the town of Roslyakovo where the shipyard is located, but officials said there was no need to evacuate local residents.

It would take a few more hours to fully extinguish the smoldering outer hull, Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said during a midday meeting. He said seven members of the submarine crew have been hospitalized after inhaling poisonous carbon monoxide fumes from the fire.

The Yekaterinburg is a Delta-IV-class nuclear-powered submarine that normally carries 16 nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles. It was built in 1984.

Most modern submarines' outer hulls are covered with rubber to make them less noisy and more difficult for an enemy to detect.

The chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, Gen. Nikolai Makarov, led a team of senior military officials to Roslyakovo to oversee the rescue efforts.

Military prosecutors have launched an investigation into a possible breach of safety regulations that led to the fire. President Dmitry Medvedev summoned top Cabinet officials to report on the situation and demand a punishment for any culprits.

The Interfax news agency reported Friday that the damage from the fire could be so massive that the submarine would need to be scrapped. But Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who is in charge of the nation's military industries, said after the meeting that the submarine will rejoin the navy after repairs.

The Russian navy suffered its worst accident in August 2000, when the Kursk nuclear submarine exploded and sank during naval maneuvers, killing all 118 crew members aboard.

A 2008 accident at the Nerpa nuclear-powered submarine killed 20 Russian seamen and injured 21 others when its fire-extinguishing system activated in error and spewed suffocating Freon gas.

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Jan Olsen contributed to this report from Copenhagen.

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Russian protests biggest in years

10 December 2011 Last updated at 13:08 ET

Daniel Sandford in Moscow: 'It is in many ways a political reawakening"'

Thousands of people have attended the biggest anti-government rally in the Russian capital Moscow since the fall of the Soviet Union.

As many as 50,000 people gathered on an island near the Kremlin to condemn alleged ballot-rigging in parliamentary elections and demand a re-run.

Other, smaller rallies took place in St Petersburg and other cities.

Communists, nationalists and Western-leaning liberals turned out together despite divisions between them.

The protesters allege there was widespread fraud in Sunday's polls though the ruling United Russia party did see its share of the vote fall sharply.

Demonstrations in the immediate aftermath of the election saw more than 1,000 arrests, mostly in Moscow, and several key protest leaders such as the anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny were jailed.

A message from Mr Navalny was released through his blog, saying: "The time has come to throw off the chains. We are not cattle or slaves. We have a voice and we have the strength to defend it."

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has never experienced popular protests like these before, the BBC's Steve Rosenberg reports from Moscow.

During his decade in power, first as president then prime minister, he has grown used to being seen as Russia's most popular and powerful politician.

But as one of the protesters put it to our correspondent, Russia is changing.

'We are the people'

Police put the number gathering on Moscow's Bolotnaya Square for the "Fair Elections" rally at 25,000 while organisers talked of 100,000.

The BBC's Daniel Sandford reports from the scene that the number seems to be closer to 50,000, and people continued to rally on the square after hearing the speakers.

A resolution was passed calling for the cancellation of Sunday's election results, new elections, the resignation of electoral commission chief Vladimir Churov, an investigation into the alleged ballot-rigging and the immediate release of arrested protesters.

Konstantin Kosachyov, a United Russia MP authorised to speak on behalf of the Kremlin, ruled out holding negotiations on the organisers' demands.

"With all respect for the people who came out to protest, they are not a political party," he was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.

Authorities had permitted the protest on condition the rally was relocated from central Revolution Square to Bolotnaya Square, an island in the Moscow River just south of the Kremlin where access points could be easily controlled.

Marchers to the rally streamed across a bridge under the walls of the Kremlin walls, past a long line of police.

Prominent figures at the rally included younger opposition activists like Yevgenia Chirikova, as well as former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister under the late Boris Yeltsin.

At least 50,000 police and riot troops were deployed in Moscow ahead of Saturday's protests and the city began to resemble a police state rather than a democracy, Daniel Sandford says.

There were no immediate reports of protest-related arrests in Moscow but the interior ministry reported 130 arrests at rallies across the country, most of them in Khabarovsk in the far east.

In other developments

• Protesters in the Pacific port of Vladivostok waved banners with slogans like "The rats should go!" and "Swindlers and thieves - give us our elections back!"

• In Kurgan, on the border with Kazakhstan, police dispersed an unapproved rally after between 200 and 400 protesters gathered on a square in freezing weather

• Some 3,000 people braved temperatures of minus 20C for a two-hour rally in Novosibirsk
• At least 3,000 people rallied in Yekaterinburg to chant "Freedom to political prisoners" and "Russia without Putin", with one protester waving a large teddy bear - the symbol of the United Russia party is a bear - impaled on a stick

Danil Klubov, a student from St Petersburg, says he is "tired of all the falsehoods and lies"

In St Petersburg, Russia's second city, thousands packed into Pionerskaya Square to hear speeches calling for the election to be re-run and for Mr Putin to resign, the BBC's Richard Galpin reports.

The protest was peaceful and well organised though some protesters were dragged away by police elsewhere in the city.

Daniil Klubov, a student leader at the rally in St Petersburg, told the BBC students had been under pressure not to attend the protests.

"I do not belong to any political movement - I am just a student who is tired of all these lies," he said.

He and others, he said, had received anonymous threats on vKontakte, a Russian networking website similar to Facebook, that they faced prison terms, expulsion from university or military conscription.

"Some people are really scared but a lot of people understand that the more people who turn out, the better our chances," he added.

Police put the turnout in St Petersburg at 10,000.

Advice to Medvedev

According to the official results of the elections to Russia's Duma, United Russia saw its share of the vote fall from 64% to 49%, though it remains easily the biggest party.

But there is a widespread view, fuelled by mobile phone videos and accounts on internet social networking sites, that there was wholesale election fraud and that Mr Putin's party cheated its way to victory.

On Friday, the presidential Council for Human Rights advising Mr Medvedev said the reports of vote-rigging were of deep concern, and that the elections should be rerun if they were confirmed.

However the council has no power to order a fresh ballot, correspondents say.

Mr Putin, who was president between 2000 and 2008, remains widely predicted to win a presidential election in March.

On Thursday, he blamed the US for stoking the recent unrest, after Secretary of State Hilary Clinton expressed reservations over the poll.

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Continue Reading... Labels: biggest, protests, Russian, years

APNewsBreak: Russian tanker to carry fuel to Nome

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The iced-in city of Nome on Alaska's western coast may be in luck: A Russian tanker that can plow through thick ice will try to deliver 1.5 million gallons of home heating fuel, gasoline and diesel fuel after a massive storm kept a barge from getting in before winter.

The vessel — which is certified to travel through ice 4 feet thick for long distances — delivers fuel to communities in the Russian Far East. The plan is for it to leave Russia this week and go to South Korea, where it will be loaded with fuel, and then travel to Nome, where it should arrive by late December.

If it can't make it into port, the tanker is equipped with a hose more than a mile for off-loading fuel.

It could save the 3,500 residents of the coastal city from a very costly winter, including predictions of $9-a-gallon gasoline if fuel had to be flown in.

Sitnasuak Native Corporation said Monday that it signed a contract with Alaska-based Vitus Marine LLC to have the double-hulled Ice Classed Russian tanker, owned by Russian company Rimsco, deliver the petroleum products.

Sitnasuak board chairman Jason Evans said if the marine tanker succeeds, it will be the first time petroleum products have been delivered by sea in winter to a western Alaska community.

"It really came down to that one vessel that could possibly do the job. It just so happens it was available at the moment we needed it," Evans said.

Sitnasuak has between 800 and 1,000 customers in Nome and was looking at a $3 to $4 per gallon increase if fuel had to be flown in. He said Monday the tanker option more than halved the increase. Fuel prices are also lower than they were a couple of months ago, he said.

"The net result will be incrementally more, not substantially more," he said.

Sitnasuak looked at its options after a Delta Western Inc. barge was not able to make a delivery to Nome, leaving the city short of its winter fuel supplies.

If nothing was done, supplies of gasoline and diesel, needed to run ambulances and state equipment to maintain and plow roads, were expected to reach low levels within three months. Home heating fuel was in better supply in the city, which has one other major fuel supplier.

Sitnasuak, which has been in the fuel businesses for more than 20 years, said that flying fuel to Nome would be costly. It settled on the Russian, ice-class tanker delivery plan after determining it would be much less expensive and more practical than flying fuel.

The tanker recently traveled through about 5 feet of ice to reach communities in the Russian Far East, Evans said.

Evans said it worked closely with the Coast Guard to come up with a solution to the Nome fuel problem. He said Coast Guard personnel in Tokyo will go to Vladivostok, Russia, to clear the tanker for entrance into U.S. waters. The plan is to have the tanker go to Inchon, South Korea, and then to Nome in what could be a 20-day journey.

He said the Native corporation was asking the Coast Guard on Monday if the Healy, the nation's only functioning ice breaker, could remain in Alaska waters to make sure the tanker gets to Nome. The Healy is scheduled to return to Seattle just before Christmas.

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