Probe heading out to mine asteroid

The Philae landed on a comet.

Japan is set to launch a space probe on a six-year mission to mine a distant asteroid after the event was postponed because of bad weather, officials said.

Hayabusa2 is now scheduled to blast off tomorrow aboard Japan's main H-IIA rocket from Tanegashima Space Centre in southern Japan, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said.

The agency had originally planned to launch the rocket today only weeks after a European spacecraft's historic landing on a comet captivated the world's attention.

But a forecast of thick cloud over the weekend forced the agency to delay the launch.

The 31 billion ($333 million) project is sending a probe towards the unpoetically-named 1999 JU3 asteroid in deep space.

It will blast a crater in the asteroid to collect virgin materials unexposed to millennia of solar wind and radiation, in the hope of answering some fundamental questions about life and the universe.

Hayabusa2, about the size of a domestic refrigerator, is expected to reach the asteroid in mid-2018 and will spend around 18 months studying the surface.

Meanwhile, Rosetta engineers claim the plucky probe could come back to life as soon as March next year, as comet 67P gets closer to the sun.

The probe is currently only receiving around an hour of sunlight during the comet's 12-hour day, with its batteries frozen in temperatures of -170C.

Previous estimates simply said the probe could awaken within "the next few months".

In a recent Reddit "ask me anything" session, engineers at mission control said: "We expect to have enough energy to boot around March next year. Then Philae needs to be heated until we can think of starting to charge the battery."

The batteries were meant to be recharged by solar panels, but because Philae hopped a couple of times after the first touchdown, it ended up in shadow.

"It is like trying to power your house with solar panels when you live in Alaska just below the Arctic Circle during the winter," said engineer Michael Maibaum.

Engineers claim spring in Philae's hemisphere will give the probe more sunlight.

AAP, Daily Mail