Grate Scott 'Washington Uni'.

Here in Art View with Scott Pace, as he is the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. Saying 'they must be disappointed' that their mission went into jeopardy. He added, also one wonders what they must be thinking about when it comes to international cooperation. As more vital space projects 'become unsuccessful' as this probe was loaded with toxic fuel, deemed as a reentry into earths atmosphere  with in weeks of departure scattering large amounts of debris across garden slates-from Ireland England to Norway makes such a vital project obsolete to science.The plan was for its upper stage then to boost it on the long flight to Mars, where it was intended to go into orbit in September 2012. It was supposed to land on ‘Phobos in February 2013, scoop up about 7 ounces of soil’, and bring it back to Earth in August 2014. Mr. Pace said the Chinese had encountered difficulties cooperating with Europe on the ‘Galileo global satellite navigation system’, ultimately and have withdrawing from the project in 2007. The talk of cooperation in space with the United States had generated political controversy in Washington. After launch, Phobos-Grunt successfully separated from the Zenit rocket that took it and a Chinese probe the Russian craft is carrying into space. But the Russian spacecraft's thrusters failed to fire in a sequence that was supposed to send it on its year-long journey to Phobos, one of Mars' two moons and instead ended up in gardens.

But Ted Molczan, a Canadian satellite observer, said the upper stage never fired. It was supposed to start automatically, out of range of Russian communications stations on the ground. Molczan says the ship is in a low elliptical orbit, ranging between 129 and 212 miles from Earth. Mars will gradually move beyond where the ship, with a finite fuel supply, can reach. In the meantime, Earth's atmosphere will gradually slow it from orbit. Decay from orbit is not imminent, with the caveat that the spacecraft's rate of orbital decay has yet to be determined with precision. The 30,000-pound Phobos-Grunt probe is in an "egg-shaped" orbit that comes as close as 129 miles above Earth at its lowest point. That's within the reach of the planet's atmosphere, according to reports, and should create enough drag on the craft to bring it tumbling back to the surface

Russian space officials had all but given up hope of salvaging an unmanned probe that is supposed to be headed for a landing on a Martian moon but is instead stuck in orbit around Earth due to a serious propulsion glitch, according to reports. ‘I think we have lost the Phobos-Grunt," former official Vladimir Uvarov told the Russian-language Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily. ‘It looks like a serious flaw. The past experience shows that efforts to make the engines work will likely fail."The $170 million robotic probe was launched Tuesday despite 11-10-2011  ahead of time that the spacecraft's command and control system had problems that had not been fully resolved. Russian space engineers had planned to send new instructions to the probes computer early Thursday to re-try the firing sequence. It's not clear if that plan had failed, but Uvarov's comments later in the day are an indication that it had. China's piggybacking orbital probe would be the country's first to visit Mars if the Phobos-Grunt mission can still be salvaged. The Russian mission was intended to mark a return to planetary exploration for the country's space agency. NASA officials have offered to assist their Russian counterparts in salvaging the mission if asked. The U.S. space agency plans to send its own Mars Science Laboratory rover on its way to the Red Planet later this month, with a launch from Cape Canaveral scheduled for Nov. 25. Although much of it may break up and burn on re-entry.