WASHINGTON — The United States insists that it had nothing to do with the failure of the Russian Mars moon probe that crashed to Earth this week and said it cooperated with requests to help save it.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the United States helped in efforts to reestablish contact with the spacecraft after it was stranded in orbit.
She said that although the recovery efforts were unsuccessful, the United States also helped monitor the final orbits of the Fobos-Grunt probe and its uncontrolled entry into the Earth's atmosphere.
Fragments of the probe showered into the south Pacific on Sunday. Russian investigators have said they will examine whether a U.S. radar station could have inadvertently interfered with the probe. Experts called such claims far-fetched.
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