14 DAY TRIAL // The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has just put its moon mission on indefinite hold due to technical glitch, in what seems to be a never ending streak of bad luck for the country's ambitious plans to get to the Moon.
Called the Selenological and Engineering Explorer - or SELENE, the space probe was designed to take off on August 17 aboard the H-2A propeller rocket and later to land on the Moon, in a premiere that was considered the proof of Japanese technical achievements.
Unfortunately, a recent inspection discovered that some components were improperly installed, not on the main orbiter itself, but on its two smaller companions. Still, this means that the launch was delayed until the components of the two small satellites would be replaced.
Despite the renowned technical expertise of the Japanese scientists, the lack of experience in the field is taking its toll, since the mission is already four years behind schedule and has now reached total costs of $264 million.
Since the U.S. Apollo program, the SELENE lunar lander is the larger mission of this kind, as it consists of a main satellite to be placed in orbit at an altitude of about 60 miles and two smaller satellites to be guided into polar orbits.
It will carry 13 instruments including imagers, a radar sounder, laser altimeter, X-ray fluorescence spectrometer and gamma-ray spectrometer to study the origin, evolution, and tectonics of the Moon from orbit.
Scheduled to remain in position for about a year, the main orbiter will corroborate its own data with what the two satellites will transmit, in order to study the moon's origin and evolution. That is, if it will finally overcome the technical problems.
Future manned space missions have not been excluded by the Japanese space agency, but these will have to wait for a decade or so, since for now, Japan has no manned space program, although Japanese have flown aboard NASA's space shuttle and a Japanese journalist rode on a Russian spacecraft.