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Rosetta Probe Finally Hits The Skies

By Staff Writer | March 2, 2004

      The European Space Agency‘s $1.25 billion Rosetta probe finally began its mission to hunt a comet in the depths of the solar system and to shadow it around the Sun after being launched from Kourou, French Guyana, earlier today. The three-ton probe was sent into space on an Ariane 5 rocket at 7:17 GMT.

      According to Arianespace officials, there were no problems with this launch. The project already had suffered from a 13-month launch delay coupled with two recent scrubs.

      The Rosetta probe will meet the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko 420 miles from the Sun in early 2014. It will drop a refrigerator-sized mini-lab onto the comet’s surface to carry out chemical and geological analysis in hopes of gaining an insight on how solar system was formed and how life began on Earth.

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