Russia’s Mars-bound probe Phobos-Grunt had an almost immediate engine failure after launch, and now the race is on for the space agency to correct its course and get it back on track towards the red planet.
The craft successfully launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 9 November (Moscow time), and separated from its Zenit-2 booster rocket some 11 minutes later. But its engines failed to kick in, and it’s now trapped in Earth’s orbit.
The Russian space agency says that it now has three days to correct the probe’s fault remotely, turn on its engines and break out of Earth’s orbit, before the £105-million craft’s batteries run dry.
The probe’s plan was to journey to Mars, circle the planet for a few months and then touch down on the Martian moon of Phobos. Once there, the robotic spacecraft would scoop up a couple hundred grams...
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