ESA had 2 succesfull contacts last week with the Russian Mars-probe Phobos-Grunt, but  has not been ablo to re-establish contact since thursday.

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

ESA's 15 m-diameter antenna at Perth, Australia, was again used to contact Russia's Phobos–Grunt spacecraft during the night of 23–24 November, with a total of five communication passes available between 20:19 and 04:08 GMT. Teams working at the Perth station and at ESA's Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany, were delighted to see a clear signal during the first of the passes. 

"The first pass was successful in that the spacecraft's radio downlink was commanded to switch on and telemetry was received," said Wolfgang Hell, ESA's Service Manager for Phobos–Grunt. Telemetry typically includes information on the status and health of a spacecraft's systems. "The signals received from Phobos–Grunt were much stronger than those initially received on 22 November, in part due to having better knowledge of the spacecraft's orbital position."

The second pass was short, and so was used only to uplink commands – no receipt of signal was expected. However, the following three passes in the early morning of 24 November proved to be more difficult: no signal was received from Phobos–Grunt.

Sources: ESA