Contact Made with Wayward Russian Space Probe

Probe's mission to Phobos could be salvaged after two weeks of orbiting ever closer to Earth.

There is new hope that the Russian Mars probe Phobos-Grunt won't come crashing down into our beautiful planet, as a tracking facility in Australia has re-established contact with the wayward spacecraft. The probe, launched two weeks ago with the goal of getting it to land on the Martian moon of Phobos, malfunctioned shortly after leaving Earth's atmosphere and got stuck in our planet's orbit. That raised concerns that the probe would eventually burn up in our atmosphere or crash land into our planet, which could lead to an ecological incident given the amount of toxic fuel aboard. However, a space centre in Perth, Australia, made contact with the probe late yesterday, giving hope to Ruscomsos, the Russian space agency, and the European Space Agency, that they might be able to get the probe back on its trajectory toward the moon. If they don't, we can expect the probe to re-enter our atmosphere sometime between late December and late February. Those are pretty terrible months anyway, so we advise you to just stay the heck inside then.