Ummmmmm…no:

Rogozin, at least, admitted that a far more plausible cause was a failure on the spacecraft itself. “Practially all disruptions are due to flaws in the technologies manufactured 12 to 13 years ago,” he said. And a new and highly plausible report issued today further supports the leading theory: that the craft’s autopilot software had never been adequately debugged. The probe’s chief scientist, Alexander Zakharov, also denounced the interference theory as “exotic” and “disingenuous.”

The Russians have space tracking blind spots around the world because they scrapped their sea-going tracking ships years ago, and closed down other ground sites. The space program’s tracking ability is so limited that shortly before the launch of Fobos-Grunt, a program scientist emailed amateur astronomers in South America, asking them to go outside when the probe was passing overhead and report whether its rocket was firing on time. (It wasn’t, as it turned out.)

And as for Kwajalein, scientists familiar with worldwide radar tracking of asteroids assure me they’ve never heard of any participation by radars based there. If asked, they would have told Kommersant the same thing.

Sadly, this knee-jerk blame shifting in the space industry has ramped up in recent years. The real danger in the Russian nonsense about finding the United States at fault for the crash isn’t just the blow to diplomacy and public attitudes. Also important is how such claims prevent a proper investigation and get in the way of implementing a reliable “fix.”

Phantom “causes” lead to delusional, even damaging, responses. That raises the level of danger to which everybody whose lives depend on Russian spacecraft—and that now includes U.S. and other astronauts—is exposed.

Yup. And it’s looking more and more like it was a software problem.