Russia's doomed Phobos Grunt mission to Mar's moon is confirmed to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere in January, but where will it fall?

The RIA-Novosti earlier reported that based on the U. S. Strategic Command, the Russian spacecraft will crash in southwestern Afghanistan on January 14. However, experts said that it is still too early to tell exactly where the PG debris will fall.

Gene Stansbery of NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office at Johnson Space Center told writer Alan Boyle that it is, indeed, too early to predict the circumstances of Phobos-Grunt's re-entry.

According to Boyle, the most that can be said about the impact zone right now is that it will be somewhere between 51.4 degrees north and 51.4 degrees south latitude. That's a swath of the planet that stretches from Calgary, Alberta (or Ghent, Belgium) in the north to the Falkland Islands in the south and takes in the vast majority of the world's population.

If the spacecraft lands lands in Afghanistan, the chances of recovery might be poor, given the proximity to a war zone, Boyle said. However, if it lands in the ocean, which is most likely, the chances of recovery is even smaller, just like the two other satellites, the NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite and Germany's ROSAT space telescope, which fell in the waters and were never recovered.

Earlier, a Russian space official said that while the 13.5 ton probe, which is carrying highly toxic fuel, could also crash into the earth, it is impossible to predict the exact position of such an event.

"The crash area of any craft can only be estimated in the final 24 hours," said Vitaly Davydov, deputy head of Roscosmos in the first official acknowledgment on failed probe Davydov said. "Before then, saying what will fall and where is pointless."

Russia launched the Phobos-Grunt research probe to the Martian moon Phobos on Nov. 9, in an attempt to reinvigorate its interplanetary program which had not seen a successful mission since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Because of the failed probe, Davydov said that in the future Russia may just focus on sending probes to the Earth's moon and researching on Mars in cooperation with its international partners.

"Maybe it makes sense to switch to more comprehensive steps towards the Moon, and regarding Mars, to rely on cooperation with our foreign partners," Davydov said.