Ground controllers re-established full links Sunday with a European-Russian Mars orbiter which worryingly stopped sending status updates after releasing a lander on a three-day trek to the Red Planet's surface.

"Everything is back on track," spokeswoman Jocelyne Landeau-Constantin of the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, told AFP by telephone, surrounded by "a lot of relieved people".

An overnight manoeuvre will continue as planned to steer the orbiter off a collision course with Mars, she added.