A NASA spacecraft lifted off on Wednesday on the first leg of a six-month journey to blast a hole in a comet and study what lies beneath. The Delta 2 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station as planned at 1:47 p.m. EST (1847 GMT) with a spacecraft the size of a small car tucked inside its nose cap. The probe, named Deep Impact, was put on a path to encounter Comet Tempel 1 on July 4 more than 82 million miles (132 million km) from Earth. "We had a perfect launch," said NASA launch manager Omar Baez, minutes after the spacecraft was successfully released into orbit 35 minutes after liftoff. "We're on our way and we'll be there July 4." While most space probes passively study the cosmos or conduct microscopic tests, Deep Impact will experiment with a planetary body itself. Scientists find comets alluring because their frozen cores contain pristine samples of materials used in the formation of the universe. While telescopes and spacecraft have collected volumes of data about comets - one probe is slated to deliver the first samples of comet dust to scientists on Jan. 15, 2006 - nothing is known about comets' interiors. --More 2321 Local Time 2021 GMT
