Dud Battery Grounds Nasa Mars Mission Yet Again

Nasa's mission to search for evidence of life on Mars was postponed yesterday because of a faulty battery. Officials set a new launch time for the Opportunity exploration vehicle tonight, giving technicians time to fit and test a replacement.

The battery failure, the latest in a series of mishaps in launching the robotic rover, has drawn unwelcome attention to problems at Nasa only days before the release of a report on the causes of the Columbia shuttle disaster last February.

The fifth delay since the original June 25 launch date for the $400m mission raises concern that Nasa may miss its chance.

The launch must take place by July 15, after which Earth and Mars will move out of alignment.

The regular postponements are inconvenient for Nasa, which is expecting scathing criticism in the report on the doomed Columbia, which disintegrated over Texas, killing all seven astronauts.

Some commentators demanded a national debate on the future of space exploration in the wake of that catastrophe, the subject is likely to be revived on the release of the Columbia report.

The investigators are expected to confirm their early suspicion that the spacecraft was brought down by a chunk of insulation foam from the fuel tank which pierced one of its panels.

But they are also expected to blame a management culture in which Nasa engineers grew complacent about damaged or malfunctioning equipment.

Leaks from the accident investigation suggest that they have been especially concerned about the discovery that foam debris occurred fairly routinely during space flights, affecting seven missions before the Columbia, and that Nasa managers had begun to regard it as a normal occurrence.

Last week Nasa tried to blunt the impact of that criticism by transferring three of the managers involved in the Columbia launch.

The mishaps delaying the Opportunity launch seem almost comical in comparison, and trivial against the grandeur of its aims: to discover whether large bodies of water which existed on Mars more than a billion years ago lasted long enough to foster life on the red planet.

The six-wheeled rover exploration vehicles were due to arrive on Mars next January and roll across the desolate terrain, extending their hinged robotic arms to gather soil samples and take photographs.

The first such vehicle, the Spirit, was launched in early June.

Opportunity's departure appears to have been jinxed, its launch dates scrubbed because of poor timing, bad weather, technical failings, and plain bad luck.

Yesterday officials reported battery failure. On Saturday it was the cork insulation on the Delta 2 launch rocket which had become unstuck - or suffered "selective debonding" in space agency-speak. The material had to be reglued with stronger adhesive, and then given time to dry.

Earlier on it was a wayward fishing boat which wandered into the flight path just before liftoff.

If Nasa fails to launch it before July 15 the mission will have to be shelved, possibly for four years until Earth and Mars return to their optimal positions for a planetary voyage.