Russia's Mars probe deflected shortly after launch

The Russian space exploration ship, scheduled to collect samples of rock on a moon of Mars, flew off course a few minutes after the start of its 33-month-long mission.

>>>Russia begins to explore Mars's satellite

The Russian aerospace agency said the engine to keep the spacecraft on the right track did not work. Engineers have 3 days to fix this error before the battery runs out of storage.

This is Russia's most ambitious space project in recent years. The explorer ship is called Phobos-Grunt , with 'grunt' meaning 'land' in Russian. (Phobos is the name of one of the two satellites of Mars).

Scientists hope that the collected rock will help them learn more about the origin of the 27km Phobos satellite. Many scientists suspect that Phobos may actually be an asteroid 'stuck'.

Phobos-Grunt on the launch pad

The mission to conquer Mars this time is also significant because it carries China's first Mars satellite. Yinghuo-1 is a probe satellite weighing 115kg, being 'piggybacked' on the back of a Russian spacecraft. It is expected to be released into the observed orbit of the Red planet.

Phobos-Grunt is launched from the center of Baikonur in Kazakhstan, on the Zenit-2SB boosters at 11:16 on November 9 (local time).

If the malfunction can be fixed and everything goes smoothly, the Mars satellite model will return to Earth within 3 years.

'It seems that the engine system doesn't work,' said Vladimir Popovkin, head of the Russian Space Agency. 'That means it doesn't determine the direction of the stars'.

'I would not say it was a failure, it was a non-standard situation, but a situation still in operation,' he said.

James Oberg, a retired NASA member, is now an advisor, saying he still has the ability to get the ship back on track.

'It is urgent to regain control, analyze computer errors, and send emergency rocket control systems , ' he said. He also said that based on the nature of the problem, it was 'not a force majeure challenge'.

Russia hopes Phobos-Grunt will eventually conquer his Mars 'curse' . Because the country has sent a total of 16 missions to Mars since the 1960s, but no success mission. The Mars-96 spacecraft, thought to be sophisticated and Russia's largest recent attempt, was destroyed in a failed launch.