PARIS, March 2 (RIA Novosti) - The French booster Ariane-5 was launched from Kourou, French Guyana, today, to orbit the Rosette European spacecraft for studying the obscure comet located 500 mln kilometers from the Earth.
Made within the framework of the program of the European Space Agency, the launch had been postponed two times. On February 26 it was prevented by strong winds at the space center and the next day the launch was foiled by damage done to heat insulation during fueling.
The Rosette craft will head for the periodic Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet, opened by Soviet astronomers Klim Churyumov and Svetlana Gerasimenko in 1969. If everything goes well, Rosette will reach the comet in August 2014 and send an automatic module to it for studying the chemical composition of the comet's surface. Scientists hope the results of this expedition will help them learn more about the evolution of the Universe.
