Space & Astronomy

Russian Phobos mission fails

By T.K. Randall
November 9, 2011 ·  27 comments

Image Credit: Roscosmos While the initial stages of the launch went as planned, the probe was meant to fire its engines twice around 11 minutes later but never did. Now the spacecraft is stuck in Earth's orbit and engineers have around three days to repair the fault before its batteries run out. At 13.2 tons the Phobos-Grunt probe is the heaviest interplanetary spacecraft ever built and represents what was hoped to be a triumphant return to space exploration by Russia's space agency.

Comments (27)

Tags: