Stardust Takes Off to Chase a Comet

After a day’s delay because of a radar problem, the comet-chasing spacecraft Stardust left Cape Canaveral, Fla., aboard a Boeing Delta rocket on a seven-year, 3 billion-mile quest for comet dust. NASA’s Stardust mission is the first attempt to gather material from beyond the moon and return it to Earth. The last time the agency went after samples in outer space was Apollo 17, in 1972, the last of the manned lunar landings. Comets are icy, rocky bodies thought to be pieces of the original building blocks of the solar system and may well contain compounds from which life formed. “Comets can tell us about the history of the early solar system and the early history, perhaps, of our own Earth,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory astronomer Martha Hanner said.