WASHINGTON -- Racing over a "speed bump" could mean expensive car repairs. But in the world of celestial mechanics, a bump-up in velocity can give spacecraft the right alignment.

Engineers and scientists said the flyby was successful and Stardust is in excellent shape.

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Rather, the lunar look-see by Stardust will help engineers better determine the degree to which the probes navigation camera remains fogged. Earlier in the mission, gasses eking from Stardust condensed on parts of the camera, degrading the quality of the images.

Brownlee said, however, that a combination of Stardust maneuvers and onboard heaters have substantially cleared up the cameras clouded optics. The new pictures of the Moon should help gauge how the device is doing given its warm-up exercises.

While the desk-sized Stardust used Earth to slingshot its way toward its comet prey, astronomers from California, Hawaii and Australia were reported to have made successful observations of the fleeting craft.

The gravity boost lengthens the spacecrafts solar orbit to about two and a half years from the current two years. That sets up Stardust for its rendezvous with P/Wild 2 in January 2004.

Stardusts mission hasnt been all trouble-free.

One heart-stopping moment for the Stardust team came last November. The craft was rocked by photons from a solar flare some 100,000 times larger than normal. That bombardment put Stardust into safe mode, with its solar panels pointed toward the Sun. Eventually, ground controllers were able to regain full operation of the probe.

Stardust is the first U.S. mission dedicated solely to a comet and will be the first to return extraterrestrial material from outside the orbit of the Moon.