An amateur astronomer from Paris has managed to shoot video of the Russian interplanetary probe Phobos-Grunt, currently stuck in orbit and expected to fall to Earth in mid-January.
Thierry Legault, who made the recording, was surprised to learn that, as he saw no sign of the probe tumbling. He noted that the images show the Phobos-Grunt moving backwards, with the solar panels deployed but not lit by the Sun. “It’s not surprising that it had no energy to communicate!” he said.
The veteran recreational astronomer drove hundreds of kilometers to get a clear image of the probe, which he shot on January 1 from the Calern Plateau observatory above Nice in the French Riviera.
Phobos-Grunt was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on November 9. Costing over 5 billion rubles ($200 million), it was supposed to retreive soil samples from Phobos, a moon of Mars, but got stuck in a support orbit due to an engine failure shortly after launch.