There is little chance of saving the Phobos-Grunt probe sent to bring back soil from Mars’s largest moon, Russia’s space agency said yesterday.
Theprobe has been stranded in earth’s orbit since its launch and the announcement was the first official acknowledgement that it was lost.
Russia launched the flight to the Martian moon Phobos on November 9, in an attempt to reinvigorate its interplanetary programme which had not seen a successful mission since the fall of the Soviet Union.
However, hours later the probe failed to depart the Earth’s orbit and mission control lost radio contact with it.
“We need to be realists,”said the deputy head of Roscosmos Vitaly Davydov.