Right now, Russian scientists are scrambling to save the Phobos-Grunt probe that was intended to be on its way to Mars by now. Instead, mission planners are now faced with a Mars exploration robot stick in Earth orbit with its power fading fast. Even more troublesome is what is aboard: 10 tons of fuel and a small amount of radioactive cobalt-57, which was intended for use in one of the scientific experiments. Now, the satellite with all its undesirable baggage is, more than likely, headed for an uncontrolled re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.
In the annals of planetary exploration, no lander that has ever left Earth has been designed to return, until now. If all goes according to plan, the Phobos-Grunt probe will embark on a 3-year mission to Phobos, the larger of the two Martian moons, where it will conduct scientific experiments and collect soil before launching a return vehicle to Earth.
Now, while Phobos-Grunt is important in the aspect of planetary exploration itself, it also serves as a trailblazer for humans, especially considering NASA's plan to land humans on an asteroid. It is all but certain that Phobos is an asteroid that has been captured by the massive Martian gravity, thus becoming a Moon. Like asteroids, Phobos is tiny and has virtually no gravity to speak of whatsoever. That, plus the mysterious nature of an asteroid's surface, will all face NASA at some point in the future but now, if Phobos-Grunt makes it to its destination, America will have some important data to go on for its own future missions.
Back to Phobos-Grunt. As of now, things aren't looking good. While there has been no official word from the Russian space agency of late, veteran observers, looking at what has been done in the last few days, have largely come to a consensus that the mission is looking more and more bleak by the hour. Right now, Phobos-Grunt sits in an already degrading low-Earth orbit, with some forecasters putting re-entry as early as November 26. The good news: most of the toxic substances are expected to burn up in the atmosphere. Key word: expected.
In the end, only the rapidly ticking away time will tell what will become of what could be the most ambitious planetary probe short of the Moon landings in the history of space exploration.
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