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Japan's Lunar Explorer Enters Observation Orbit
Tokyo (XNA) Oct 22, 2007 Japan's first lunar probe satellite had been successfully put into observation orbit around the moon, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said Friday. According to JAXA's press release issued earlier in the day, the Selenological and Engineering Explorer had finished its task of reducing the maximum distance to the moon and was circling around the moon in an almost rounded orbit. The satellite was currently orbiting in a track of 80 to 123 kilometers around the surface of the moon, the press release said. JAXA officials said the orbit was not the final stable one for the satellite. Its angle and position would be further adjusted in the following days with an aim to direct cameras and all related instruments to point to the moon. The final stable observation orbit of the explorer would be a rounded one with a distance of about 100 kilometers to the surface of the moon, officials said, adding that it has to be waited until Sunday when JAXA could tell whether the final orbit could be realized as scheduled. The satellite, named "Kaguya" after ancient Japanese fable, was lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan by a H-2A rocket on Sept. 14. It was injected into the lunar orbit on Oct. 4. Consisting of a 3-ton main orbiter and two 50-kilogram sub-satellites, Kaguya is equipped with 14 scientific instruments and a high-definition television camera. Under the 55 billion yen (474 million U.S. dollars) project, Kaguya is to begin its 10-month mission around December, collecting lunar features related with the origin and evolution of the moon.
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Our First Lunar Program: What Did We Get From Apollo
Washington DC (SPX) Oct 19, 2007American plans now call for a return of humans to the Moon by around 2020. What can we hope to gain from such a program? It will be helpful to look back at our first lunar program, Apollo, and ask what we got from it, beside some 850 pounds of rock and soil - fascinating to geologists, but perhaps not to all taxpayers. I will try to summarize highlights of the payoff from Apollo. What was the "Apollo Program"? There was much more to it than Neil Armstrong's "one small step," and even more than the following five lunar landings - any one of which would have been a gigantic accomplishment. |
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