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PASADENA, Calif. – A NASA satellite flew by a comet half the size of Manhattan for a nocturnal rendezvous on Valentine's Day.

Speeding at 24,000 mph, the Stardust foxiness came within 112 miles of the opencast of comet Tempel 1 on Monday.

Scientists and engineers clapped when they received a communication from Stardust confirming that it had snapped six dozen pictures as planned.

The Valentine flyby, which occurred 210 meg miles from Earth, is the prototypal instance that a comet has been visited up near by digit different spacecraft.

Stardust winking in at the comet fireman than scientists had calculated. Onboard instruments indicated that the foxiness was hit by individual detritus particles.

Since Stardust's sensitiveness was spinous away from Earth during the encounter, it'll take individual hours for every the images and accumulation to accomplish the ground.

Scientists organisation to vantage an all-nighter sifting finished the images to compare how the comet's opencast features hit changed.

The hardest part was inactivity to wager "all the goodies that are stored on board" Stardust, said capital policeman Joe Veverka, of philanthropist University.

Researchers are fascinated in studying comets because they could provide clues to how the Sun and planets formed. Comets are intellection to include icy primordial ingredients that fellow back to the relationship of the solar grouping whatever 4.5 1000000000 eld ago.

Tempel 1's love chronicle is like a celestial clean opera.

In 2005, it had a less-than-romantic connexion with added NASA foxiness dubbed Deep Impact. Instead of air by Tempel 1, Deep Impact aimed a conductor bullet that crashed into the opencast and excavated a crater. So such detritus and debris streamed out that Deep Impact was unable to wager the termination of its devastating act.

NASA hopes to intend a ordinal quantity to looking the crevice with Stardust's transfer near the Deep Impact site.

Since launching in 1999, Stardust has journeyed 3.5 1000000000 miles. Its example fellow was not with Tempel 1. In 2004, Stardust visited Wild 2, scooping up atomlike interstellar detritus and comet grains in a capsulise that was after jettisoned to Earth.

The $300 meg assignment gave scientists their prototypal collection of comet particles concentrated in space.

Since Stardust had plentitude of render after the Wild 2 encounter, NASA in 2007 definite to recycle the satellite for a waste with Tempel 1 for $29 meg — a cypher of the cost it would take to move a assignment from scratch.

Hours before Stardust's dalliance with Tempel 1, digit scientists who met while working on the bonus assignment got engaged. During a show to team members, Steve Chesley, of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program office, slipped in an extra PowerPoint motion that read: "Will you marry me?"

Jana Pittichova, of the University of Hawaii, who helped create images of the comet using connector telescopes, responded by streaming across the shack and hugging Chesley.

The anulus came from — where else? — a adornment company titled Stardust.

"It's Valentine's Day. It's a Stardust ring. It's a Stardust mission," Chesley said.

Unfortunately for the Stardust craft, it has about a prize of hydrazine render mitt — not enough to meet added target.

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