Sabotage by foreign forces may have caused the recent "unexplained" failures of Russian satellites, according to Russia's space chief Vladimir Popovkin, even as the countdown for the predicted Jan. 15 re-entry of the failed Phobos-Grunt mission begins.

In an AP report, the Roscosmos head reportedly said that modern technology makes spacecraft vulnerable to foreign influences, adding that some Russian craft had suffered unexplained malfunctions while flying in the part of the globe which is beyond the reach of Russia's tracking facilities.

"I wouldn't like to accuse anyone, but today there exists powerful means to influence spacecraft, and their use can't be excluded," Popovkin was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, the countdown for the re-entry of the Phobos-Grunt mission starts. According to reports, unless some unlikely last-minute development intervenes, the spacecraft will most likely plunge into the Earth atmosphere on Jan. 15.

On Jan. 7, 2012, Roskosmos reported that the stranded spacecraft had been orbiting the Earth in a 229.4 by 189.2-kilometer orbit. According to the latest official predictions from Roskosmos, Phobos-Grunt would reenter the Earth atmosphere between January 10 and 21 with a "central point" around January 15, 2012.

Popovkin said experts have so far failed to determine why the Phobos-Ground probe's engines failed to fire, but admitted the program had suffered from funding shortages that led to some "risky technological solutions."

The failed Phobos mission was the latest in a series of recent Russian launch failures that have raised concerns about the condition of the country's space industries and raised pressure on Popovkin. Space officials have blamed the failures on obsolete equipment and an aging work force.

Popovkin also said in 2013, Russia will launch three new communications satellites that will be able to retransmit signals from other Russian spacecraft as they fly over another hemisphere.

"What was billed as the heaviest interplanetary probe ever may become one of the heaviest space relics to ever fall back to Earth out of control, an unenviable record," said James Oberg, a NASA veteran who now works as a space consultant, on the Phobos-Grunt craft which was successfully launched by a Zenit-2 booster rocket from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on November 9.