TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's space
agency said Wednesday that its lunar probe has performed flawlessly so far,
five days after the craft's launch marked a giant step forward for Tokyo in
Asia's undeclared space race.
The Selenological
and Engineering Explorer -- or SELENE -- probe was launched
last Friday and is slated to orbit the Earth twice before proceeding to the
moon where it will gather data to be used to study its evolution.
"The flight has been
proceeding smoothly to this point. We haven't had any reports of problems with
any of the equipment," said Seiji Toyama, a spokesman for the Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA.
The 32-billion yen (US$279
million; euro201 million) SELENE began the first of a series of course
adjustment maneuvers Wednesday morning as it neared the end of its first
orbit around the Earth, Toyama said.
JAXA describes the SELENE
project as the largest lunar mission since the U.S. Apollo program in terms of
overall scope and ambition, outpacing the former Soviet Union's Luna program
and NASA's Clementine and Lunar Prospector projects.
The SELENE's mission
involves placing the main satellite in orbit at an altitude of about 100
kilometers (60 miles) and deploying the two smaller satellites in polar orbits.
Researchers will use data gathered by the probes to study the moon's origin and
evolution.
The main
orbiter will remain in position for about a year.
The probe's launch, which
came four years behind JAXA's original schedule, comes as China is rumored to
be planning to launch its own lunar probe.
The country's minister of
defense and technology told China Central Television in July all was ready for
a launch "by the end of the year."
China's
Chang'e 1 orbiter will use stereo cameras and X-ray spectrometers to map
three-dimensional images of the lunar surface and study its dust.
Japan launched a moon probe
in 1990, but that was a flyby mission, unlike SELENE, which is intended to
orbit the moon.
It canceled another moon
shot, LUNAR-A, that was to have been launched in 2004 but had been repeatedly
postponed because of mechanical and fiscal problems.
The
SELINE was launched aboard one of the space program's mainstay H-2A rockets
from Tanegashima, the remote island where the agency's space center is located.
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