MOSCOW  - Russia's space agency on Sunday called off all predictions of the likely crash site of its ill-fated Mars probe only hours before the 13.5-tonne spacecraft was due to begin its fatal descent.
Roscosmos said on its website that fragments of the stranded Phobos-Grunt voyager would probably fall to Earth on Sunday between 1641 GMT and 2105 GMT. But it cancelled its Saturday forecast of the debris splashing down in the Pacific off the western coast of Chile. Two earlier updates had the fragments falling into the Indian and Atlantic Oceans.
The ITAR-TASS news agency cited space agency sources as saying the fiery plunge was now likely to begin at 10:40 pm (1840 GMT) and possibly see the debris scatter over a remote spot in the Chinese portion of the Gobi Desert. The unmanned $165 million vessel - stuck in a low Earth orbit since its November 9 launch - will be one of the largest objects to re-enter the atmosphere since Russia brought down the Soviet-era Mir space station in 2001.
Sky gazers report the gold-coloured vessel emitting a bright orange glow as it traverses the globe in an eastward direction between London to the north and New Zealand to the south.