A mission to send a billion-euro comet chasing space probe, the Rosetta, to the comet Wirtanen has been abandoned and a new target will be chosen, the European Space Agency (ESA) said Wednesday.
Five or six other possible comets will be studied before a new destination for the Rosetta is found, a decision likely not to be taken before year's end, the director of science at the ESA, David Southwood, told a press conference.
The launching of the Rosetta probe, initially set for January 11, was first postponed for several days, following last month's failure of an Ariane 5 rocket, before being indefinitely shelved.
An inquiry has suggested that a faulty cooling system caused the Ariane 5 ECA — a new heavier version of the standard Ariane 5 — to malfunction minutes into its maiden voyage.
Rosetta was due to be launched on a standard Ariane 5, but officials remain concerned that that rocket might suffer from the same defect that forced mission controllers to abort last month's Ariane 5 ECA launch.
Rosetta was designed to loop around Mars and twice around the Earth, using the two planets' gravitational pull like a slingshot to propel it to a spectacular rendezvous with the comet Wirtanen in 2011.
earlier related report
Paris – Jan 14, 2003
