Can Russia’s Stuck Mars Spacecraft Be Saved?

Russia’s latest shot at Mars suffered a setback shortly after launch yesterday when its upper-stage thrusters failed to fire, leaving the Phobos-Grunt probe stuck in orbit around Earth instead of on its way into deep space.

Details are still hazy about what went wrong, but the problem appears to lie with an instrument called a star sensor.

The spacecraft should have “known” when to fire its engines after using the sensor to orient itself to the stars, thereby setting its course for Mars. Either a software problem stopped the star sensor from working, or the sensor itself failed.

The craft is scheduled to pass over Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan shortly, and technicians there will attempt to communicate with Phobos-Grunt to determine whether the failure is fixable.

The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, originally said they had three days to get the stranded craft working, but mission managers have since changed that estimate to two weeks, giving them more time to fix the problem.

Read more, but know that in early January 2012, the craft plunged into the Pacific ocean. Bummer.