ESA News http://www.esa.int

12 August 2003

Flight 162 delayed

Arianespace today announced a delay in Flight 162, scheduled to launch SMART-1 on the first stage of its journey to the moon.

The Ariane-5 launch, with SMART-1 and two commercial satellites on board, was planned to take place on Thursday 28 August from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The launch has now been put back six days until 3 September.

ESA's SMART-1 spacecraft, Europe's first probe to the Moon, will take around 16 months to reach its destination where it is expected to carry out a number of unprecedented studies of the Moon, and demonstrate innovate and key technologies for future deep space science missions.