Technicial difficulties with BepiColombo, a joint project between Europe and Japan, will push back its launch to Mercury by 13 months until August 2015, but officials do not expect the postponement to trigger another increase in the mission's budget. Artist's concept of the BepiColombo spacecraft at Mercury. Credit: ESA/JAXA Launch was set for July 2014, but development and testing of the mission's electric propulsion thrusters, solar arrays, antennas and thermal control system is taking longer than expected, according to Jan van Casteren, Europe's BepiColombo project manager. "Much of the equipment is specially developed for this mission and is critical in view of its intended operation at...
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