Phobos-Grunt Still Unresponsive in Earth's Orbit

The Russian Federal Space Agency's (RosCosmos) Phobos-Grunt mission, which took off from Baikonur a couple of days ago, is still stranded in Earth's orbit. Engineers are now trying to figure out what happened that the spacecraft's main thrusters did not ignite on time.

While the failure comes as a blow to the Russians, there is hope for the sample-return mission still. RosCosmos has about two weeks to come up with a solution, before the mission is entirely lost.

“I think the mission is eminently rescue-able, depending of course on the root cause of the problem. If it's software, which is perhaps the most likely problem, there's time to load existing or thrown-together contingency commands,” space consultant James Oberg tells Space.

Phobos-Grunt is the first Mars-bound mission Russia launches in more than 20 years. All its previous attempts have also failed, although the other spacecraft did manage to at least reach the Red Planet.