Lately, the Russians have been having a hard time maintaining the quality control and merit with regards to their space program. According to Yahoo! News, a Russian spaceship that was supposed to be bound for Mars with 12 tons of toxic fuel is instead circling around our very own Earth.

Unfortunately, this spaceship full of toxic sludge could come crashing back to Earth within a couple weeks if scientists are not able to send it on to its rightful path.

Strangely, news of this does not come as a surprise. This is merely the latest in a chain of failed Russian missions that has raised some eyebrows. Another failed mission has grown worries about the integrity of the Russian space program. This was a $170 million dollar project.

Last Wednesday (November 9^th, 2011), scientists were hoping that probes within the spaceship could be fired silently, thereby sending it to Mars. The unmanned vessel was launched directly after midnight on Wednesday Moscow time. The vessel was supposed to separate from its booster and then (precisely 11 minutes later) it was meant to fire its engines twice and head for Mars.

The engines did not fire, so the vessel stayed in Earth’s orbit. Now the Russians found their ship some 129 to 212 miles above the earth. It was being tracked by American satellite trafficking. According to calculations done by NASA, the ship could stay in orbit for approximately two weeks before starting to deteriorate.

The vessel weighs approximately 14.6 tons and 12 tons of that weight is toxic fuel. To read more, go here.