Japan said yesterday it had successfully put its first lunar probe into the Moon's orbit, stealing a march over China and India as an Asian space race heats up.
The Kaguya probe, named after a fairytale princess, is on the most extensive mission to investigate the moon since the US Apollo human spaceflight program in the 1960s and 1970s, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said.
After it blasted into space last month on a domestically developed rocket from southern Japan, the lunar explorer orbited the Earth twice before firing its engine to change course.
"The satellite successfully entered the Moon 's orbit. We are glad that we achieved one of the big challenges in this mission," said Tatsuo Oshima, a JAXA spokesman.
Japan kick-started an Asian Moon race on Sept. 14 with the launch of its lunar orbiter, aiming to restore some pride in its troubled space program.
Japan has been expanding its space operations and has set a goal of sending an astronaut to the moon by 2020.
China, which sent a man into space for the first time in 2003, plans to launch its own moon probe before the end of the year, followed by India in the first half of next year.
Japan's ?55 billion (US$478 million) lunar probe, aiming to collect data for research on the moon's origin and evolution, will orbit 100km above the moon.
Once it gets close to the moon it will start observation of land features and study gravitational fields, the JAXA spokesman said.
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