Russia to investigate into possible U.S. radar involvement in Mars probe damage.

A Russian government commission inquiring into why the Phobos-Grunt Mars probe crashed this week is to test whether it was affected after launch by U.S. radars on its second orbit around the Earth, the commission said on Tuesday, Jan 17, RIA Novosti reported.

The decision followed a report by Russia’s Kommesant daily, which quoted an unnamed source in the Russian space industry that the commission is considering several causes of the failure, including a short circuit or “external impact.”

The investigators said that they would stage an experiment where a model Phobos will be subjected to radiation similar to that from U.S. radars.

“The results of the experiment will allow us to prove or dismiss the possibility of the radars’ impact,” said Commission head Yury Koptev, the former head of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin also said on Tuesday that the loss of the probe could have been caused by the U.S. radar’s activity.

Earlier, head of the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos Vladimir Popovkin suggested that the inexplicable malfunction of the Russian spacecraft could have been caused by “interference from a foreign technical facility.”