Phoenix mission launched to Mars

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US space probe named Phoenix Mars Lander was successfully launched early Saturday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and began its nine-month journey to Mars, where it will dig for clues to past and present life.

The lander blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard a Delta II rocket at 5:36 am (0936 GMT) in a flawless launch that illuminated the dark night sky.

Phoenix had been originally scheduled to launch on Friday, but the mission was postponed 24 hours after bad weather Tuesday prevented fueling of the two-stage rocket.

If everything goes as planned, Phoenix should complete its 680 million kilometer 420-million-dollar journey to Mars on May 25, 2008.

The lander's assignment is to dig through the Martian soil and ice in the arctic region and use its onboard scientific instruments to analyze the samples it retrieves.

"We have worked for four years to get to this point, so we are all very excited," said Phoenix project manager Barry Goldstein at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

NASA hopes to land the probe on flat ground with few or no rocks at a Martian latitude equivalent to northern Alaska on Earth.