Update as of 2059 GMT on Monday: ESA says it has fixed the problem that prevented GOCE from launching on Monday and will attempt lift-off again on Tuesday at 1421 GMT.
The much-anticipated launch of the European Space Agency鈥檚 new gravity mapping satellite has been delayed until Tuesday or later as teams work to resolve issues with the probe鈥檚 launch tower.
The (GOCE), was set to launch on Monday from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia, which lies some 800 km north of Moscow.
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But the countdown to its launch was stopped seconds before lift-off because the launch tower failed to retract.
The agency hopes to attempt to launch again at 1421 GMT on Tuesday, the probe鈥檚 next launch window. But a new launch date has not yet been set because ESA is still investigating what went wrong.
鈥淲e鈥檙e confident that it will launch tomorrow, but we鈥檙e expecting more information to come,鈥� says Robert Meisner of ESA鈥檚 Earth Observation Programme.
Monday鈥檚 delay is not the first for the gravity probe. The spacecraft was previously set to take off in September 2008, but the launch was delayed several times while engineers worked to correct a problem in the guidance and navigation system of the probe鈥檚 Russian Rockot launcher.
Once in orbit, the 鈧�350 million probe is set to map the Earth鈥檚 gravity field in unprecedented detail, a measurement which is expected to refine models of the planet鈥檚 climate and ocean circulation patterns.
