BERLIN, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- The Rosetta probe, a European spacecraft, completed a crucial maneuver by closely flying over Mars early on Sunday, according to reports from the European Space Agency's control center in Darmstada, western Germany.

    ;The pioneering space probe successfully performed a "swing-by" of the red planet and orbited Mars quite close on its originally planned trajectory, which is a key maneuver in its 10-year voyage through the solar system to make the first soft landing on a comet.

    "The successful flyby is fundamental to the mission, so we are very happy for the big success," said Andrea Accomazzo, the Rosetta spacecraft operations manager.

    This maneuver is the second of four "gravitational assisted maneuvers" that the probe will carry out before it finally reach its ambitious target, comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. Two further trips around Earth, planned for 2007 and 2009, will serve to accelerate the probe on its way to reach its ultimate destination.

    By 2014, Rosetta plans to go into the comet's orbit, and release a small landing device that will try to drill into the surface of the comet and relay back an analysis of its composition.

    The one-billion-euro (1.31 billion U.S. dollars) spacecraft, named after the stone, which unlocked the secrets of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, was launched on March 2, 2004, and its final destination, the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, is a 5-km-long irregular chunk of ice, frozen gases and dust.

    Scientists expect the Rosetta probe to reveal secrets of the composition and development of the 4.6-billion-year-old solar system, as comets are among the most-primitive objects in the system.