RUSSIA RAISES DOUBTS ABOUT SPACECRAFT DEBRIS.Byline: Michael R. Gordon Michael R. Gordon is the chief military correspondent for The New York Times [1]. Together with Judith Miller, he wrote most of that paper's coverage of the Bush administration's case for war with Iraq in 2002. The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times One day after a plutonium-carrying Russian spacecraft was reported to have landed harmlessly in the Pacific Ocean, a mystery emerged about when it re-entered the atmosphere and where it fell. The surprising confusion over the whereabouts of the debris arose Monday as Russian space officials insisted that the unmanned space probe had not landed in one piece in the Pacific as initially announced by the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. . The officials acknowledged that the demise of the Mars-bound spacecraft had dealt a devastating dev·as·tate tr.v. dev·as·tat·ed, dev·as·tat·ing, dev·as·tates 1. To lay waste; destroy. 2. To overwhelm; confound; stun: was devastated by the rude remark. blow to a space exploration program that had once been a source of deep national pride. ``It hit the whole space program hard,'' Yuri Milov, the deputy director of the Russian Space Agency, said at a news conference. ``We don't plan any other mission of the kind.'' Officials said 20 countries had invested a total of $180 million in scientific equipment for the research craft, while Russia provided $122 million. The mission went wrong shortly after launching. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Russian officials, the fourth stage of the booster rocket malfunctioned, and the spacecraft and the rocket fell to Earth separately, re-entering the atmosphere a day apart. While the world waited Sunday to see whether the spacecraft - and the small amount of radioactive plutonium it carried - would hit Australia or Chile or fall in the ocean, the craft had already crashed, according to the Russian account. Just where it landed is another riddle. Russian space officials insisted Monday that the spacecraft had fallen into the southern Pacific, near the booster rocket. But as a result of budget cutbacks, a Russian tracking ship that is normally used to follow important launchings was not at sea, and some American officials said they doubted that the Russians could pinpoint the location of the wreckage. Russia's ability to track its errant spaceflight with Earthbound earth·bound also earth-bound adj. 1. Fastened in or to the soil: earthbound roots. 2. a. stations was limited - so limited that the Russians asked the U.S. Space Command to help find it. Monday's account by Russian scientists surprised the U.S. Space Command, which took the view that the length and mass of the object that they tracked to an eastern Pacific splashdown splash·down n. The landing of a spacecraft or missile in water. splashdown Noun the landing of a spacecraft on water at the end of a flight Verb splash down could be explained only if the booster and spacecraft were linked and had fallen in one piece. Based on information from the Space Command, White House officials said Sunday that the spacecraft had re-entered the atmosphere above the southern Pacific Ocean west of South America South America, fourth largest continent (1991 est. pop. 299,150,000), c.6,880,000 sq mi (17,819,000 sq km), the southern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. and crashed into the sea. |
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