MOSCOW, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- The doomed Russian Phobos-Grunt Mars probe, stuck in Earth orbit for two months, crashed into the Pacific Sunday, Russian officials said.
"Phobos-Grunt fragments have crashed down in the Pacific Ocean," Russia's Defense Ministry official Alexei Zolotukhin told RIA Novosti.
Phobos-Grunt, launched Nov. 9, was designed to bring back rock and soil samples from the Martian moon Phobos, but it was stuck in orbit after its engines failed to put it on course for the Red Planet, Novosti reported.
Britain's The Mirror said the probe fragments could have landed anywhere between the south of England and the Falklands.
Instead, they landed in water 775 miles west of Wellington Island off the southern coast of Chile.
The 14.3-ton unmanned spacecraft was still roughly 90 miles above the Earth at midnight but getting closer to the surface with each revolution, the BBC reported.
The Russian space agency projected the probe would reach the atmosphere and burn up late Sunday, with 20-30 pieces weighing a total of 440 pounds left by the time it reaches the surface.
In September, a U.S. satellite plummeted back to Earth with no discernible impact and a German space telescope did the same in October.
The Russian mission, launched Nov. 8, was to have gone to the Martian moon Phobos to scoop up samples of rocks and bring them back to Earth for study. It reached its initial Earth orbit but its rocket failed to boost it on its path to Mars.
