and i m not nervous about it. reporter: dan burbank is the only american on this mission. first astronaut to launch into space since retirement of the space shuttle fleet earlier this year. the price tag for his seat $56 million. the russian space agency desperately needed this launch to succeed after two catastrophic failures earlier this year. first an unmanned progress supply ship in august, blamed on a contaminated fuel line. now flight controllers are scrambling round-the-clock to communicate with another unmanned spacecraft. phobos grunt, launched on a three year mission to mars to bring samples back to earth. the spacecraft reached low earth orbit, but its engines failed to fire to send it on to the red planet. round-the-clock efforts to contact the crippled spacecraft have failed. it s inevitable, this spacecraft will plunge back to earth. it seems like this is the year