Japanese lunar probe finishes critical phase

MOON DAILY

by Staff Writers
Tokyo (AFP) Oct 9, 2007
Japan's first lunar probe, launched more than a month ago, successfully finished its initial critical phase, the space agency said Sunday.

"Both the Kaguya main satellite and its two baby satellites are in good health," the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said in a statement.

The Kaguya probe, named after a fairytale princess, released two baby satellites after being launched from southern Japan on September 14.

The 55-billion-yen (478-million-dollar) lunar probe is on the most extensive mission to investigate the moon since the US Apollo programme in the 1960s and 1970s, according to the space agency.

The baby satellites will be used to study the gravity fields of the moon, among other projects, the space agency said.

Japan has been expanding its space operations and has set a goal of sending an astronaut to the moon by 2020.

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Our First Lunar Program: What Did We Get From Apollo

Washington DC (SPX) Oct 19, 2007
American 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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