© AP/ Russian Roscosmoc space agencyIn this Nov.2, 2011 photo distributed by Russian Roscosmos space agency on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011, the unmanned Phobos-Grunt probe is seen on the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.
Engineers fought desperately on Wednesday to save Russia's Phobos-Grunt spacecraft after the Martian probe sent "a first sign of life" more than two weeks after being stranded in orbit.
After days of frustrating silence, contact with the probe was made on Tuesday at 2025 GMT at a European Space Agency ground station in Perth, Western Australia, the Paris-based ESA said.
"ESA teams are working closely with engineers in Russia to determine how best to maintain communication with the spacecraft," it said.
A spokesman at European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, told AFP: "We sent an instruction to (the probe) to switch on its transmitter and the probe sent us telemetric data.
"However, we do not have all the details and we are not very sure of what we received. It's a first sign of life," he said.
The probe is in a "very low, very unfavourable orbit (that) is difficult to identify accurately," the spokesman added.