(20023-09-28) -- A French-made Arianne rocket took off from French Guiana last night on a European Space Agency mission to "go round and round the moon."

The unmanned probe will take 15 months to get into lunar orbit, where it will try to determine the moon's mineralogical composition and whether it has water. The probe will not land.

Between 1969 and 1972, the United States launched six successful lunar missions, during which men walked, drove a small car and hit golf balls on the moon. They returned to earth with 842 pounds of lunar rocks, core samples, pebbles, sand and dust.

The European mission is dubbed SMART-1.