Well, there are still some options for making contact, after all the Beagle will be trying out a whole series of variants (frequencies, etc.) over the next 10 days. So there's no need to panic yet.
And Mars Express itself is already a very impressive success - and with the high-resolution camera system and radar system also very interesting.
All in all, a good achievement. Of course, the Beagle would be the icing on the cake - and it wasn't so cheap that you could just throw it away.
At RP-Online: Wissenschaft I found the original article.