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a ground station in Australia heard signals from Russia's marooned Phobos-Grunt Mars mission

A tracking station in Perth succeeded in contacting Phobos-Grunt

Russia sought help from ESA, which maintains a network of radio stations around the world

the head of Russia's space agency, said after launch the mission could be salvaged until early December

many experts said the launch period has already expired, meaning Phobos-Grunt would have to wait until 2013 for another shot at Mars

Tuesday's brief contact did not produce telemetry to gain insight into the situation on-board the spacecraft

Following the first successful contact on Tuesday, ESA's tracking station in Australia again established two-way communication with Russia's Phobos–Grunt spacecraft on 23 November

data received from the spacecraft have been sent to the Russian mission control centre for analysis

The first pass was successful in that the spacecraft's radio downlink was commanded to switch on and telemetry was received

signal was received at a Russian station at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Thursday afternoon

expected that fragments of the probe would fall to Earth in January or February although the exact date would depend on external factors

One expert said that its surprise show of life had generated hope that the probe could be brought down back to Earth safely