Cape Canaveral - A low-cost robot explorer blasted off from Florida on Tuesday, headed for a year-long mission to probe the moon for minerals and ice.
Lunar Prospector, NASA's first moonshot since men last set foot on the moon in 1972, took off at 9:28 p.m. local time, riding a brilliant pillar of flame into the night sky over the Florida coastline.
Lunar Prospector is due to arrive in a 100-km-high orbit about the moon's poles on Sunday after a 4 1/2-day coast through space. Eventually the craft will crash on the lunar surface.
The probe also carries one ounce of the ashes of planetary scientist Dr Gene Shoemaker, who died last year in a car accident in Australia. Programme scientist Dr Joseph Boyce described it as a "wonderful and fitting tribute to one whom many consider to be the father of lunar science".