On this day in space! July 3, 1998: Japan launches Nozomi Mars Mission

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The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launched the country's first space probe to another planet.

A metal spacecraft with large solar panels floats in the darkness of space
(Image credit: Nesnad via Wikimedia Commons)

On July 3, 1998, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency(JAXA) launched the Nozomi spacecraft on a mission to Mars. Nozomi (のぞみ) is Japanese for "Wish" or "Hope." This would be the country's first probe to go to another planet.

Nozomi was supposed to arrive at Mars in Oct. of 1999, but an electrical malfunction left it lingering in a heliocentric orbit without enough fuel to get there on schedule. Mission scientists then re-routed the spacecraft so it would arrive at Mars in Dec. of 2003. However, a powerful solar flare that hit the spacecraft in 2002 damaged its communications and power systems.

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When Nozomi finally arrived at Mars, mission control was unable to send it into Mars' orbit, so they abandoned the mission altogether.

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Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

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