Russia sent a probe to gather soil on Phobos, the largest moon on Mars, earlier this month. Hours after its Nov. 9 lanuch, however, the spacecraft, set to return to Earth by 2014, became stuck in Earth's orbit when its engine failed to fire. The engine of the probe was designed to fire twice: once to leave Earth's orbit and again to set its route to Mars. But the probe was left in a standstill, circling Earth.
Contact was made days later at the European Space Agency in Western Australia. ESA's Perth dish, used to communicate with the probe, was modified by a side antenna, enabling it to transmit signals over a wide angle to the probe in its present low orbit.
Currently the ESA and Russian engineers are working together to maintain communication and decipher six minutes of reports received from the probe. ESA is still unsure of what caused the engine failure, but it believes there is still hope for the $102 million mission if the malfunction occurred in software and not hardware. ESA is working to fix the problem within a narrow time frame because starting the journey to Mars after a shift in the alignment of the planets would make the distance too far for the probe to reach.
-compiled by Michelle Lim
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