Washington - The US space probe Stardust lifted off yesterday from Cape Canaveral, Florida to begin a voyage of nearly four billion kilometers (2.5 billion miles) to bring bits of comets back to Earth.
Fixed to a US Delta-2 rocket, Stardust blasted off at 4:04 p.m. (2104 Irish time) from the Kennedy Space Center.
A technical glitch in the Boeing rocket on Saturday had delayed the lift-off for 24 hours.
The craft is due to catch up with the Wild 2 comet in January 2004 somewhere between Mars and Jupiter, and cross the trail of luminous dust which forms the comet's tail. With the help of a device similar to a butterfly net, Stardust is to collect a handful of Wild 2's dust particles.
The probe is then set to head back to Earth and parachute the samples onto a frozen Utah desert around mid-January 2006. Scientists hope an analysis of the particles will yield clues to the origin of the solar system.
Before crossing the comet's wake, Stardust will gather particles of interstellar dust. Scientists believe the particles are the raw material from which all solids in the universe were formed.