Russian Mars mission looks set to fail.

The Russian Phobos-Grunt probe had been launched successfully on Wednesday, but failed to set the correct course for Mars and is now stuck orbiting Earth. As it left Earths’ atmosphere, the craft was meant to find it’s position from the stars and fire more engines, but this failed to happen.

The European space agency has begun helping Russia to try and re-establish contact with the craft, with the hope that with a successful software fix the craft could still complete its mission. But with the battery failing on the craft and it slowly falling back to Earth, time is running out.

The mission was meant to land on the Martian Moon Phobos, before returning soil samples to Earth. It was also carrying China’s first Mars satellite, Yinghuo-1.