Japan Launches Lunar Orbiter Mission

Sooner Boomer writes "In a historic event, Japan today launched its first lunar probe. The mission is nicknamed Kaguya after a fairy-tale princess from Japanese myth. The news media is calling it the 'latest move in a new race with China, India and the United States' to explore the moon (don't forget Google). From the article: 'The rocket carrying the three-metric ton orbiter took off into blue skies, leaving a huge trail of vapor over the tiny island of Tanegashima, about 1,000 km (620 miles) south of Tokyo, at 10:31 a.m. (9:31 p.m. EDT) as it headed out over the Pacific Ocean. The mission consists of a main orbiter and two baby satellites equipped with 14 observation instruments designed to examine surface terrain, gravity and other features for clues on the origin and evolution of the moon. China has plans to launch an orbiter later this year, with unmanned rover lander mission scheduled for 2010. India and the US also have orbiter missions scheduled for next year.'"

Comments

SELENE

[Poromenos1]

Interesting choice of name. Selene was a lunar deity and is the Greek word for the moon.

Kaguya

[penp]

Kaguya was also the name of a character in Okami who goes off into space in a giant bamboo stalk.

Coincidence?

I think not.

If we're going to get picky...

[benhocking]

Perhaps we should be more concerned with how they misspelled "second" (as "first"). From Red Orbit:

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) had previously launched HITEN in 1990, delivering the small lunar orbiter HAGOMORO. Kaguya is said to be the largest lunar mission since NASA's Apollo programme.

Despite several news services saying this is Japan's first lunar probe, lunar orbiter, etc., it is not. It is the largest one, and the first in over a decade, but it is not it's first.

very high Japan probe failure rate

[peter303]

About six years ago Japan tried to send a probe to Mars. It MISSED the plant so, they sent around the solar system to try to hit Mars again. When it finally got there, it had run out of fuel and died.

The had a little better luck with a comet probe. It made it there. I was supposed to retrieve samples. They think it might have gotten some. But the probe died on the way back to Earth.

Good luck next time!

Re:very high Japan probe failure rate

[mithridatesVIEupator]

No, it didn't die. It'll be back here in 2010. Whether it got the samples as it was supposed to do is another story. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa

Tiny?

[Goaway]

Tanegashima is "tiny" now? The island's 50 km long. It's got a city on it!

tons are tons are tonnes (info)

[petes_PoV]

metric, imperial, whatever.

The difference between the two tons (or tonnes if you must) is so small that to qualify whether you're using one or the other is nit-picking[1]. As it is, unless the weight of the spacecraft is an exact number of tons, the journalistic rounding-off of the weight far exceeds this small difference in definitions.

[1]unless of course you're using the weight in orbital mechanics calculations, in which case you'll need better accruacy than the 1 significant digit reported here.