US Erases Russian Grunt Radar Data After Accusations?!

Have you heard this one? A couple of days ago a friend told me that the Russians were blaming the US of blasting their Phobos Grunt probe with radar making it unable to get a fix on its' position and therefor crashing back into the Pacific ocean. I really thought it was the height of paranoia and an effort from those in control to cover their collective asses from the Russian government that said heads would roll for this mistake. So I just disregarded it as ranting when I heard about the radar connection. But then our government does something so patently suspicious you have to ask, what were they thinking? It seems, according to the Gizmodo article:

• After Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin accused the United States of being the main suspect in rendering their Phobos-Grunt Mars spacecraft useless, the United States Strategic Command has mysteriously deleted all the spaceship's data from their Space Track database.

Really?  In plain sight?!!  Its not like Space Track is some super secret site:

• Space Track is an unclassified but password-protected site. It tracks every object in orbit, publishing timely data about their position. The data is publicly available to more than 39,000 users in more than one hundred countries around the world.

Not exactly a place to pull a stunt that is clearly against Space Track policy.  

Gizmodo article