The Phobos-Grunt spacecraft was put in orbit on Wednesday, but failed to fire the engine that was designed to take it on to the Red Planet.
Engineers have been using tracking stations around the globe in an attempt to talk to the probe and diagnose its problems - but without success.
Europe has offered Russia its assistance.
The European Space Agency Spacecraft Operations Centre (Esoc) in Darmstadt, Germany, is now involved in trying to establish a link, using its antennas in French Guiana, the Canary Islands and on the Spanish mainland.
The US space agency (Nasa) has also offered to do anything that might bring the wayward craft under full control.
The spacecraft weighed some 13 tonnes at launch - double the mass of Nasa's recently re-entered UARS satellite.
What is more, most of the 13 tonnes is made up by the propellants unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) and dinitrogen tetroxide (DTO), both of which are toxic.
It was the presence of a large quantity of toxic propellants on the returning spy satellite USA-193 that the American government used to justify its decision to shoot down the spacecraft with a missile in 2008.
If the probe is destroyed by a missile in its current orbit could it become a more severe problem by becoming even more untracked debris fragments that could damage other satellites currently in orbit?
perhaps manually increasing its orbit or pushing it outwards then destroying it would be a better thing to do.
that is if they cannot gain control of its engines.
http://rt.com/news/phobos-probe-space-mars-037/ will the horse drink the water?
wouldnt it be a much better thing if all countries pooled their money and formed a planetary space administration that worked together to explore space?
this way things might be safer for us earthlings with the resulting pool of minds working together.
