On Tuesday, 22 November at 20:25 UT, tracking station of European Space Agency (ESA) at Perth, Australia, established contact with Russia’s Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, according to a press release from ESA. This was the first signal received on Earth since the Mars mission was launched on 8 November, 2011.
Perth tracking station (ESA)
ESA teams are working closely with engineers in Russia to determine how best to maintain communication with the spacecraft.
Phobos-Grunt is an interplanetary probe developed by NPO Lavochkin and the Russian Space Research Institute, that includes a lander to study Phobos, one of the moons of Mars, and a sample return vehicle to return a soil sample of about 200 g to Earth.
