Counterfeit Chinese parts eyed as culprit behind Russia's doomed Mars probe.

The article reports that substandard electronic components manufactured by China's counterfeiting industry may have been the cause for Russia's Mars probe Hobos-Grunt to fail and crash into the Pacific Ocean recently. Citing an anonymous source in Russia's space industry, it is stated that certain key microelectronic parts required for Phobos-Grunt probe were extremely hard to obtain in Russia.