The head of the Russian space agency (Roscosmos) has raised concerns that an outside influence might have been responsible for a recent series of mission failures – most notably the failure of their Mars probe, Phobos-Grunt.
Vladimir Popovkin said it was unclear why the setbacks seemed to occur at the exact moment they passed though a communication black spot – a sort of ‘dark side’ of the Earth invisible to Russian radar. But he did go on to admit that the Mars mission had been under-funded.
Since the loss of Phobos-Grunt in November, Russia has lost several satellites and suffered the first failure of its Progress cargo ship.