Engineers will be able to
fix the flaws by that date, the Federal Space Agency said in scheduling the
launch at the Russian-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The European Space Agency's
Venus Express probe was originally set to be launched Oct. 26 by a Soyuz-Fregat
rocket, but a problem
arose with thermal insulation in its upper stage.
Despite the delay, the
launch will fit into the one-month window during which the celestial motion of
the planets makes a voyage to Venus the most fuel-efficient.
Venus Express, which is set to enter
orbit around the planet in April and begin its scientific mission in July,
carries a set of instruments to study the thick and mysterious atmosphere of Venus.
Scientists hope that the mission will help provide clues about the features,
status and evolution of the entire planet.
The ESA said its investment
in Venus Express amounts to about $265 million, covering development of the
spacecraft, launch and operations.
The delay in the Venus
Express launch followed the loss of another European space vehicle earlier this
month and other recent mishaps that have made this month one of the most
troublesome periods in the recent history of Russia's space program.
The ESA's CryoSat satellite
was lost
Oct. 8 due to the failure of a Russian Rockot booster, dealing a major blow to
the ESA, which had hoped to conduct a three-year mapping of Earth's polar ice
caps and provide more reliable data for the study of global warming.
Also this month, space
experts failed
to recover an experimental space vehicle after its return, engineers lost contact
with an earlier launched Russian Earth-monitoring satellite and a new optical
research satellite was lost
due to a booster failure.
The mishaps hurt the
reputation of the Russian Federal Space Agency, which depends on revenue from
commercial launches of foreign satellites to complement meager state funding.
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