ARMED with a brooch given to her by her father, a portrait of the Queen, and tubes of concentrated bortsch, Helen Sharman, from Sheffield, yesterday lifted off in a Soviet Soyuz space rocket to become the first Briton in space.

As her parents watched from a viewing stand a kilometre away, the rocket carrying the 27-year-old food scientist and two Soviet colleagues roared off at exactly 1.50.09pm British time, leaving the same gantry in the desert of Soviet Kazakhstan from which Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space 30 years ago.

As the rocket (which accelerates from 0 to 18,000mph in eight minutes) gently lifted off, Sharman, who two years ago worked at the Mars chocolate factory in Slough, waved at a television camera inside the space capsule that allowed her parents, and the world, to see her. "That she had the presence of mind to wave at that moment was simply remarkable" said her father, John, 51, the head of a higher technology college. Andrea, her younger sister, 25, was in tears.

Earlier, her family had wished good luck to Helen inside Baikonur's rocket construction centre. It was a parting made on two sides of the glass of a quarantine chamber, protecting the cosmonauts from contamination. "We wished her a good flight, a successful mission and a happy landing" said Sharman's mother, Lyndis.

After lunching on cold meat and red caviare, Sharman and her two companions walked out into brilliant sunshine in white spacesuits with blue-rimmed helmets reflecting the sun. Above them hung the Soviet and Union flags and a banner that proclaimed: "The road to the stars is open"

It was on another road that Sharman's odyssey began. Two years ago, while driving from work to her home in Surbiton, Surrey, she heard on her car radio about an advert for an astronaut, "no experience necessary"

After beating nearly 13,000 rivals in a Soviet government competition to promote its programme of joint space-shots with other countries, enduring a 17-month training programme, the "woman from Mars" took her seat on board yesterday's Soyuz TM-12 rocket to boldly go where no Briton has been before.

She clutched a small blue 'space passport' identifying her as a cosmonaut in the unlikely event that on her return in seven days time, the rocket is forced to land outside the Soviet Union.

Britain's pride may be dampened, however, by the knowledge it lies 23rd in the space race; even a man from outer Mongolia has beaten the girl from outer London into orbit. The Soviet Union has taken a Mongolian, an Afghan, a Cuban, a Syrian and a fee-paying Japanese journalist on previous flights; America has flown a Dutchman, Germans, a Mexican and a Saudi Arabian prince.

The Juno project involving Sharman has also suffered setbacks. It missed its planned takeoff date and yesterday's take-off clashed with the warm-up to the FA Cup Final, scuppering the chances of lucrative live television coverage in Britain.

Attempts to raise private sponsorship for British experiments also failed expectations; only Interflora, a watch manufacturer and a cassette-tape company came forward.

But as Sharman last night made her fifth orbit of the earth the spaceship was just visible to the naked eye as it flew over southern England and dined on tubes of dried fish and liver pate, she was simply happy to have made history.

The petite brunette had left all the project's problems back on earth. Tomorrow afternoon, after 33 orbits, Soyuz is due to dock with the orbital space station, Mir (Peace), which has carried a two-man crew for six months. Once on board, Sharman will conduct a series of scientific experiments, most of which have been planned by the Russians.

Among the British experiments will be a radio-ham exercise with schools, taking photographs of the British Isles and observing how pansies grow in conditions of weightlessness.

Rodney Buckland, director of the Space School, which helped devise the pansy experiment and nine radio conversations, admitted he would have preferred some more sophisticated experiments. "It`s an absolute disaster" he said yesterday. "The Juno launch has only gone ahead because of Soviet space aid to a Third World space country: Britain"

But Soviet officials insist the trip is mostly about Sharman. Her unflappability is a legend among her admirers. She is, according to one of her Soviet colleagues, "a quite remarkable individual", who learnt enough Russian in three months to understand science lectures.

There was anger in Baikonur at suggestions that Sharman was nothing more than a passenger on Soyuz. Several Soviet officials had recently mocked that the only pain she would suffer in orbit is "a rapped knuckle every time she tries to touch a button"

"That is simply not true" she said during final preparation. "I am in a seat which means that the other members of the crew can't touch a range of switches near to me" One of these, she said, controlled the emergency oxygen.