The Phobos-Grunt probe is one of the most ambitious Russian projects in over a decade.
FORBES: Russian Mars Probe Will Probably Fall To Earth Next Month
The agency had to modify its 15m dish in Perth to get through to Phobos-Grunt.
But if the fault lies in a hardware malfunction, Phobos-Grunt may still be beyond hope.
The community of citizen satellite trackers has, though, reported Phobos-Grunt to be in a stable orientation.
So far, the repeated passes of Phobos-Grunt over ground stations have failed to yield any telemetry.
But for some reason, those engine burns never happened, and Phobos-Grunt has continued to circle the Earth.
Launch failures claimed nearly half of Russia's probes, including the ambitious Phobos-Grunt sample return mission last year.
The agency reports that its tracking station in Perth, Australia, picked up a signal from the Phobos-Grunt probe.
The rocket failures come on top of the loss of Phobos-Grunt, Russia's most ambitious planetary mission in decades.
All the information gathered in Tuesday night's communication, including telemetry from Phobos-Grunt, has been passed straight to the Russians.
Those that go into HEO, or as Phobos-Grunt was meant to do, off to Mars, absolutely do need that protection.
FORBES: Phobos-Grunt Falls From the Sky. Tim Worstall Not Blamed
On Friday, Phobos-Grunt was moving around the Earth at an altitude that varied between 177km (perigee) and 224km (apogee).
Both the ESA and Roscosmos were able to communicate with Phobos-Grunt while it was in orbit and send commands to the probe.
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If control of Phobos-Grunt cannot be re-established, the focus of interest will very rapidly shift to the spacecraft's certain fall to Earth.
Russian Mars probe Phobos-Grunt fell into the ocean earlier this month, far short of its goal of reaching the Martian moon Phobos.
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Phobos-Grunt has been stuck in Earth orbit since its launch on 9 November, unable to fire the engine that would take it on to Mars.
Phobos-Grunt, the Russian satellite, fell from the skies as we know.
FORBES: Phobos-Grunt Falls From the Sky. Tim Worstall Not Blamed
The Phobos-Grunt spacecraft was put in orbit on Wednesday, but failed to fire the engine that was designed to take it on to the Red Planet.
Phobos-Grunt launched successfully on its Zenit rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and was dropped off into an elliptical orbit with an apogee (farthest point from Earth) of 345km.
This should make it easier to contact Phobos-Grunt in future.
Fellow tracker Ted Molczan from Toronto, Canada, has been trying to determine the precise orbit of Phobos-Grunt around the Earth, and thought on Friday he had seen the craft rise slightly.
The launch of the Phobos-Grunt on November 9, 2011.
FORBES: Russian Mars Probe Will Probably Fall To Earth Next Month
Phobos-Grunt still has a short window in which to start its journey before a change in the alignment of the planets makes the distance to the Red Planet too big to cross.
The propellants, unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) and dinitrogen tetroxide (DTO), are highly toxic but they will almost certainly be consumed in the fireball that engulfs Phobos-Grunt when it makes its death dive to Earth.
Despite valiant efforts by Roscosmos and other space agencies, the Russian probe Phobos-Grunt will be falling back to Earth over the weekend, most likely on Sunday night, according to projections by the Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies at the Aerospace Corporation.
FORBES: Failed Russian Probe Phobos-Grunt Will Fall To Earth This Weekend
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