A US radar stationed on the Marshall Islands may have inadvertently disabled Russia's Mars probe, which crashed into the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, Kommersant newspaper reported, citing an unidentified Russian space official.

The radar may have jammed electronic communications with the $163 million Phobos-Grunt craft as it monitored asteroid movements, the official said, according to the Moscow-based newspaper, adding that this would have happened unintentionally.

The Russian Federal Space Agency's Phobos-Grunt spacecraft. Credit:AFP

The Phobos-Grunt probe, designed to return soil samples from one of the two Martian moons, became stuck in low-earth orbit after its November 9 launch.

"Grunt" is Russian for soil.