Posts: General / space lol - i found it amusing

In the latest failure, an unmanned probe intended to collect ground samples on Phobos, a moon of Mars, in the most ambitious Russian interplanetary mission since the Soviet era, suffered an equipment failure shortly after Wednesday's launch and got stuck in Earth orbit.

Efforts to contact the craft have been unsuccessful, but Popovkin said there was still time to prevent it from crashing down.

"The prognosis shows that it will fly through January, and we have until the first days of December (to establish control) so it can fulfill its intended function," the RIA Novosti news agency quoted the space chief as saying.

Popovkin said engineers were making the necessary adjustments to contact the probe as it flies about 200 kilometers (120 miles) above the Earth. "Therefore I can say that there is still a chance," he was quoted as saying.