Russian Probe Mission To Mars Moon Fails

A Russian mission to fly a probe to one of Mars' moons and bring back samples of its soil has failed.

The craft was successfully launched towards Phobos from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Tuesday night.

But after the Phobos-Grunt probe separated from a Zenit-2 booster rocket, its engines failed to fire up and the planned journey to the Red Planet ended.

Russia's Federal Space Agency chief Vladimir Popovkinsaid neither of the two iginitions worked, probably due to the failure of the craft's orientation system.

Russian news reports quoted Mr Popovkin as saying that space engineers have three days to reset the craft's computer programme to make it work before its batteries die.   Full Read