Russian military space trackers say a space craft has crashed in the Pacific Ocean, west of Chile’s coast.
Pieces from the Phobos-Ground, landed in water 775 miles west of Wellington Island in Chile.
The $170 million craft was one of the heaviest and most toxic pieces of space junk ever to crash to Earth.
Space officials and experts said the risks posed by its crash were minimal because the toxic rocket fuel on board and most of the craft’s structure would burn up in the atmosphere high above the ground anyway.
The Phobos-Ground was designed to travel to one of Mars’ twin moons, Phobos and land on it.
It was supposed to collect soil samples and fly them back to Earth in 2014.
It got stranded in Earth’s orbit after its Nov. 9 launch, and efforts by Russian and European Space Agency experts to bring it back to life failed.
(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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