A German-made robot camera, launched from the Mir space station on Wednesday, suffered two malfunctions and was abandoned.

The main camera on Inspector, the metre-long probe built by Daimler-Benz Aerospace (Dasa), was facing in the opposite direction to that intended and the device was not responding properly to remote steering commands from Mir.

The hitch comes after a host of more serious problems on the 11-year-old Mir this year, including a fire and a collision with a cargo craft in June which badly damaged one of its modules.