Japan's
massive Kaguya lunar orbiter stands poised to launch spaceward this week on a
mission that, researchers hope, will unlock the secrets of the moon.
Equipped
with a veritable arsenal of science instruments and two baby satellites, the
three-ton moon probe is set to liftoff from Japan early Friday (Local Time) on
a one-year mission to Earth's nearest neighbor.
"The
Japanese people are very interested in this mission," said Shinichi Sobue,
Kaguya's science coordinator and public outreach for the Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency (JAXA). "Kaguya, or SELENE, is our first mission for really
observing the moon."
Japan launched
a previous lunar mission in 1990, but the flight served primarily as a
technology demonstrator, Sobue told SPACE.com. That mission -- dubbed
Muses-A -- sent the Hiten spacecraft on a series of lunar flybys and orbits, released
the small microsatellite Hagoromo and intentionally crashed into the moon's
surface in 1993.
Kaguya's SELenological
and ENgineering Explorer (SELENE) mission, meanwhile, is designed for in-depth lunar
study. The probe is slated to lift off atop an H-2A rocket from Japan's
Tanegashima Space Center on Sept. 13 at 9:31 p.m. EDT (0131 Sept. 14 GMT),
though it will be Friday morning at the island launch site.
The 55
billion yen (about $480 million) mission was postponed by 24 hours on Tuesday
due to bad weather. It has also been plagued by a series of other delays --
most-recently due to improperly
installed condensers on its passenger satellites -- throughout its eight-year
development, JAXA officials have said.
Hefty
probe, heftier science
Touted by
JAXA as the largest lunar mission since NASA's manned Apollo flights, Kaguya is
named after a moon princess in a Japanese folktale and carries 14 primary
science instruments to map the lunar surface and study its composition, subsurface
and gravity field.
"Through
these research activities, it is hoped that we can get closer to the core of
the mystery of the origin and evolution of the moon," Kaguya's SELENE
project manager Yoshisada Takizawa has said in a JAXA Web site statement.
The
6,000-pound (2,271-kilogram) Kaguya spacecraft is a nearly seven-foot
(2.1-meter) wide box that stands almost 16 feet (4.8 meters) tall. The
probe's X-ray and Gamma-ray spectrometers will track the distribution of
elements on the lunar surface such as hydrogen, which researchers hope will help
aid in the search for water ice on
the moon, Sobue said.
Other
instrument suites will study mineral distribution on the moon's surface; use
cameras, radar and lasers to catalogue lunar terrain and subsurface structure; and
probe the moon's ionosphere and magnetic field. A high-definition camera is also
launching aboard Kaguya, but is destined for a more aesthetic purpose.
"The
Japanese people would like to see the very beautiful, high-definition movies of
the Earth rising" over the moon, Sobue said.
Atop the
orbiter sit the relay
(RSAT) and VRAD microsatellites, two solar-powered probes about three feet
(one meter) in diameter. Kaguya will jettison the 110-pound (50-kilogram) probes
as it enters lunar orbit. The two satellites are designed to then work together
with their mothership to generate a complete global map of the moon's
gravitational field. VRAD will also probe the moon's thin ionosphere, JAXA
officials said.
"It's
the first [mission] ever to study the gravity field of the far side of the
moon," Sobue said of Kaguya's mission. "The data accumulated by
SELENE should serve as a basis for mankind's future utilization of the moon."
JAXA
mission scientists already plan to share Kaguya's gravity field measurements
with NASA researchers as the U.S. space agency prepares to launch its own
mission - the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) - in 2008 and return
astronauts to the moon by 2020, Sobue said.
Japan, too,
hopes to work with international partners to develop a lunar base as part the
agency's strategic vision 2025, he added.
"Thus,
Kaguya will also contribute to the manned exploration of the moon,"
Takizawa stated.
Fly us
to the moon
After
launch, Kaguya is expected to orbit Earth about 2.5 times before beginning the
five-day trek to the moon, Sobue said.
The
spacecraft is designed to enter into a polar lunar orbit, and then deploy the RSAT
and VRAD microsatellite before ultimately settling into a 62-mile
(100-kilometer) high orbit around the moon. The probe's one-year science mission
should begin in earnest after a three-month checkout period, Sobue said.
Kaguya is
the first of series of new spacecraft bound for the moon over the next two
years.
China plans
to launch its first
moon shot Chang'e-1 sometime later this year, with NASA's LRO and India's
Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft
set to fly in 2008. Japan also plans to follow Kaguya's flight with more ambitious
missions under the SELENE banner, JAXA officials said.
"[W]e
will plan to have SELENE follow-on missions for moon landing and sample
return," Sobue said.
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