23.02.12

Russia's stranded Phobos-Grunt spacecraft reportedly has lost its main opportunity to go to Mars and land on one of its moons, but efforts to revive it continue.

Little information has come from the Russian Space Agency since the 13-ton probe was launched on Nov. 9 , but reports from Russian news outlets say that controllers couldn't make contact before the planned window of opportunity closed today for the cruise to Mars and its moon Phobos.

Phobos-Grunt ("Phobos-Soil") was designed to scoop up a soil sample from Phobos and bring it back to Earth. It was also supposed to deliver a 250-pound (115-kilogram) Chinese mini-orbiter to study Mars' atmosphere. Before launch, Phobos-Grunt was hailed as Russia's comeback try for interplanetary exploration. But since the orbital glitch, it's been viewed as one more in a long string of failures for Russian Mars probes.

The Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed source in the space industry as saying that there was still an outside chance of going ahead with the trip to Phobos and back. "This would be possible if Phobos-Grunt received a new flight program, which would involve acceleration with the use of complex ballistic maneuvers, for instance, through the moon and with high fuel expenditure," the source was quoted as saying . "But by mid-December, even this opportunity to fire the spacecraft toward Mars will be gone.

Source: msnbc.com