RUSSIA’S SPACE programme continues a long run of bad luck with missions to Mars after the failure of a rocket left a €120 million satellite stranded in Earth’s orbit.
Flight officials say they have about three days to regain control over the spacecraft before batteries fail and it becomes a very expensive piece of space junk.
The Phobos-Grunt probe, at 13.2 metric tonnes, is the heaviest yet launched towards the Red Planet. Its three-year mission was to fly to Martian moon Phobos, land to collect soil samples, and return to Earth in August 2014.
The launch, at about 8pm Irish time on Tuesday from the Baikonur facility in Kazakhstan, went well. But soon after reaching the initial Earth orbit, the rocket failed to work as planned, according to Russian Federal Space Agency general director Vladimir Popovkin.
“The engine did not fire, neither the first nor the second burn occurred. This means that the craft was unable to find its bearings by the stars,” he said.
Flight controllers said they remained in contact with the craft but it had only limited battery life and when this went the spacecraft would in effect be dead. “We have always been very unlucky with Mars,” said the mission’s lead scientist, Alexander Zakharov of the Space Research Institute.
Two missions to Phobos failed in 1988 and in 1996 an unmanned satellite bound for Mars was lost.
The ambitious mission would have been a challenge to complete even if Phobos-Grunt – grunt being Russian for soil – had been sent safely on its way. It would have had to land on Phobos, collect about 200g of soil and take off for the return to Earth.