Europe's first mission to Mars will blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, 2 June.

The Soyuz-Fregat launcher carrying the Mars Express orbiter, and its lander, Beagle 2, is expected to leave the launch pad at 2345 local time (1745 GMT).

The launch date and time were set following a successful review of all the spacecraft's systems last week.

Mars Express will be leaving Earth slightly later than originally planned because engineers needed extra time to fix a problem in one of the probe's electronic modules.

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