Counterfeit components suspected cause for failure of Russian space probe sent to Mars

United Press International has recently printed a report stating that counterfeit chips were a suspected cause for the failure of the unmanned Russian space mission to Mars and subsequent crash back to Earth in December 2011. ITAR-Tass reported that Vladimir Popovkin, head of Russia's federal space agency Roscosmos, said heavy charged particles in space might have affected the suspect chips, causing two parts of the on-board computer system of the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft to unexpectedly reboot. Interestingly it is stated that the suspicion of counterfeit chips is because the identified chips were imported and less expensive than those used in earlier spacecraft.

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