SETI public: ESA cancels, scales back science missions

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ESA cancels, scales back science missions
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Posted: Fri, Nov 7 7:40 AM ET (1240 GMT)

Citing budget problems, the European Space Agency announced
Thursday that it was canceling one mission to search for
extrasolar planets and scaling back another mission to
Mercury. ESA said its current budget problems forced it to
cancel Eddington, a mission that had been scheduled for
launch in 2008 to look for Earth-like planets around other
stars as well as perform helioseismological studies of those
stars. ESA also announced it was descoping its BepiColombo
mission to Mercury, scheduled for launch in 2011, by
removing a lander than was going to accompany two orbiters
to the innermost planet. ESA said trying to design a lander
that could land and survive on the planet's surface "was a
bridge too far in present circumstances", and conceded that
Europe will probably lose the opportunity to be the first to
land on the planet. The agency blamed the cuts on budget
problems dating back to early this year when problems with
the Ariane 5 booster forced a 13-month delay in the launch
of ESA's Rosetta comet mission and strained budgets for that
and other missions. ESA's science program did receive a
€100 million (US$114 million) loan in June, but must be
paid back by 2006. The cuts announced Thursday allow ESA to
bring its "Cosmic Vision" program to "a level that
necessarily reflects the financial conditions rather than
the ambitions of the scientific community." ESA did
announce it was starting work on one new mission, LISA
Pathfinder, a prototype of a space-based gravity-wave
detector that ESA will build in cooperation with NASA.

Related Links:
--------------
ESA press release:
http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/SEMDVTWLDMD_index_0.html
BBC article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3244691.stm

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