Bad weather delays European space probe launch from Kourou

Launch of the European spacecraft Rosette from the Kourou space center in French Guiana has been put off by 24 hours. The reason is the bad weather: wind is building up on the launch pad area, RIA Novosti learnt from the Moscow office of the European Space Agency.

Russian specialists arriving in French Guiana to coordinate the building of a launch complex for Russian Soyuz-ST carrier rockets will observe the prospective blast-off.

The European probe will set off to an understudied comet, opened in 1969 by Soviet astronomers Klim Churyumov and Svetlana Gerasimenko. The goal is to study the role and importance of comets in the evolution of the Solar system. The probe is expected to reach the comet in ten years and land an automatic module on the surface of the comet's nucleus, approximately 3 kilometers in diameter.