Found missing Russian spacecraft

Russia is still powerless in locating the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, but an amateur astronomer happens to discover this black ship.

Ralf Vandebergh caught Phobos-Grunt wandering in the Dutch southern sky on Tuesday night. Using a 10-inch telescope and camera, Ralf captured a series of images of the ship at an altitude of about 274km above the ground. After three weeks since being launched into the air, this ship is still stuck in Earth orbit in the helplessness of the Russian aviation agency.

According to Space.com , despite the great distance, the photographs still show the shape and structure of the spacecraft. For his part, Ralf said he could see the ship clearly with the naked eye.

Phobos-Grunt was launched on November 8 in a mission to explore Mars's Phobos moon and return to Earth in 2014 along with the moon's soil. The ship has risen to Earth orbit as planned, but when separated from the boosters, the ship's engines were unable to fire to escape the Earth's attraction.

Since then, Russia has made great efforts to contact the Phobos-Grunt ship to save this $ 160 million mission. However, these efforts seem hopeless.

Last week, the European Space Agency announced an Australian ground station had caught a signal from Phobos-Grunt. But every attempt to activate the ship's engine failed, including Russia's latest effort yesterday.

Even if the Russian side regained control of the ship, it was too late. The door to lead Phobos-Grunt to Mars (based on the alignment between the planet Red and Earth) closed, Space.com analyzed.

Phobos-Grunt is the 19th spacecraft that Russia launched into Mars since 1960, but has not had any complete success.