Liftoff of one of Europe's most ambitious space projects had been scheduled for January 2003.

But it was postponed to let ESA carry out reliability checks on the Ariane 5 rocket after the launcher's 10-tonne version failed disastrously on its maiden flight a month earlier.

Rosetta will take until 2014 to reach the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko as it races through the Solar System on a long loop around the Sun.

Comets are believed to consist of virgin material left over by the creation of the Solar System billions of years ago.

Understanding their chemical composition may shed light on how Earth and the other planets were created and evolved.

Rosetta's initial target was the comet Wirtanen, but the programme had to be rescheduled because of the technical review of the Ariane 5 range.

The probe, carrying a small lander, will be taken aloft from Kourou, French Guiana, aboard a standard Ariane 5.

Meanwhile, the 10-tonne version of this rocket, the Ariane 5-ECA, will be put back into service in mid-2004 after a programme to fix the problems that led to the December 2002 failure, Arianespace's chief executive officer, Jean-Yves Le Gall, told reporters.

He said Arianespace expected to carry out up to half a dozen Ariane launches in 2004.

Despite the technical problems and the disastrous slump in the world market for satellite launches, 2003 should see "a return to financial balance" after a three-year string of losses when the annual accounts are published in the spring, Le Gall said.

Turnover, though, would be sharply down, at around 550 million eurosmillion dollars) for 2003 compared with 1.459 billion in 2002.

Losses in previous years were 105 million euros in 2002; 193 million in 2001 and 242 million euros in 2000.

Arianespace, which says it has around 50 percent of the global market for satellite launches, also announced it had won two contracts from Japanese customer JSAT Corp.

One satellite is JCSAT-9, a digital communications satellite that will be launched from Kourou around the end of 2005. Details of the other JSAT contract were not given.

The two launches of the 10-tonne Ariane are "test" missions to confirm that its Vulcain-2 engine, faulted in the 2002 mishap, is reliable, Le Gall said.

One mission will carry a US-Spanish telecoms satellite XTAR and a test payload. The other, which will take place at the end of 2004 or early 2005, will be an important ESA contribution to the International Space Station -- a supply module called the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV).

SPACE.WIRE