The hopes of Oxfordshire scientists and engineers were dashed when Europe's space mission to chase and land on a comet was postponed again on February 27.

UK science teams, including staff at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Didcot, designed and developed a miniaturised chemistry laboratory aboard the £600m Rosetta spacecraft which is planned to reach the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014.

On February 26, the launch of the Ariane V rocket carrying the spacecraft was postponed because of bad weather at Kourou, French Guiana -- just as scientists had gathered to watch a live satellite link on a giant screen at the Oxfordshire centre.

Mission controllers said the second attempt to launch the rocket was postponed for technical reasons "after a piece of foam became detached from the main stage of the rocket".

Technical inspections are taking place and the launch has been "tentatively postponed until early next week," according to a European Space Agency spokesman.

Prof Richard Holdaway, director of the Space Science and Technology Department at RAL, said that while the news was disappointing, there would be further opportunities for the launch to take place over a period of 20 days.

RAL engineers also designed and manufactured the thermal insulation of the spacecraft lander and two other instruments on board the unmanned spacecraft which will aim to probe the origins of the universe.