Russian has again asked the assistance of the European Space Agency (ESA) to contact the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft to avert the impending re-entry of the vehicle to the Earth's atmosphere.

In its latest update, Spaceflight101.com reported that Russian space officials has asked ESA to send commands to the spacecraft to raise its orbit and delay the re-entry of the vehicle. In response to request, ESA has agreed to use its Maspalomas Ground Station in Canary Islands, Spain to send commands when the proble passes overhead.

According to the report, ESA will transmit the commands prepared by NPO Lavochkin, the spacecraft designer which are emergency commands to initiate the ignition sequence of the propulsion module and hopefully raise the orbit of the spacecraft. This is will give mission controllers more time to regain control over the spacecraft and avoid re-entry.

Latest observations show that the Phobos-Grunt, which is currently in a 295 by 205 km orbit and circling the Earth every 89 and a half minutes, remains on track for ren-entry in about one month, the report said.

The Phobos-Grunt has a mass of 13,500 kilograms, more than double than NASA's UARS satellite that re-entered in September, which are mostly made up of toxic and explosive propellants that are contained in aluminum tanks. A total of about 11,150 kilograms of Hydrazine and Dinitrogen Tetroxide propellants were inside the vehicle's tanks at liftoff.

Experts, however, do not expect that any radiation could survive re-entry and cause problems on Earth.

According to scientists, the aluminum tanks will not be able to withstand the re-entry environment so that all propellants inside the tanks will burn up and not reach the surface. In case the propellants have frozen inside the tanks due to its exposure to the space environment for some time, some of the entry heat could be absorbed by the frozen fuel.

Estimates on the location of orbital decay is not possible until several orbits prior to entry, thus, predictions will become clearer in the final two hours of the spacecraft's life, scientists said.