Russian engineers are working agianst the clock  to rekindle the engines of the Russia-China joint Mars probe after a post-launch equipment failure left it stuck in Earth orbit. 

Yinghuo-1, China's first interplanetary spacecraft, has hitched a ride with Russia's Phobos-Grunt Mars mission on Wednesday morning. The probe failed to reach its intended orbit later on the same day.

The abnormality occurred after the Phobos-Grunt probe had separated from the Zenit-2SB launch vehicle, which blasted off from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan at  4:16 am on Wednesday Beijing time, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

The Russian spacecraft was scheduled to fly in a low orbit around Earth, then after two ignitions of the sustainer engine it was to shoot off on its designated trajectory to the Red Planet, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

Vladimir Popovkin, head of Russia's space agency Roscosmos, was quoted as saying that mission control lost contact with the probe because its engine failed to start after separation from the main rocket carrier.

"There was neither first nor second ignition," Popovkin said. "Russia's space control systems and similar systems of the United States searched the spacecraft on the orbit. Its fuel tanks have not been thrown off."

He said the mission's controllers have three days to study the data and retarget the program.

Officials with China's space agency said on Wednesday they are still waiting for updates from the Russian side and declined to comment.

"It cannot be called a failure yet, because the Russian side is now trying to have the probe's engine started," said Pang Zhihao, deputy editor-in-chief of the monthly publication, Space International.

It is China and Russia's first joint Mars operation and also marks China's first voyage to the Red Planet, China Great Wall Industry Corp said in a news release on Tuesday.

The main target of the Phobos-Grunt unmanned mission is to bring back the first-ever soil sample from Phobos, the larger of Mars' two moons.

At least 21 probes sent to the planet have failed. The Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology under the CASC, which designed Yinghuo-1 in 23 months, said that the satellite posed a major technological challenge as the furthest space destination for China before had been the moon.

Only the United States, the former Soviet Union and the European Union have succeeded in landing probes on Mars. Five are in operation, four belong to the US and one belongs to the EU.

(China Daily contributed to this story)

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