The Kaguya Mission Overview

Authors: Manabu Kato Susumu Sasaki Yoshisada Takizawa the Kaguya project team

Publish Date: 2010/08/25

Volume: 154, Issue: 1-4, Pages: 3-19

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Abstract

The Japanese lunar orbiter Kaguya SELENE was successfully launched by an H2A rocket on September 14 2007 On October 4 2007 after passing through a phasing orbit 25 times around the Earth Kaguya was inserted into a large elliptical orbit circling the Moon After the apolune altitude was lowered Kaguya reached its nominal 100 km circular polar observation orbit on October 19 During the process of realizing the nominal orbit two subsatellites Okina Rstar and Ouna Vstar were released into elliptical orbits with 2400 km and 800 km apolune respectively both elliptical orbits had 100 km perilunes After the functionality of bus system was verified four radar antennas and a magnetometer boom were extended and a plasma imager was deployed Acquisition of scientific data was carried out for 10 months of nominal mission that began in midDecember 2007 During the 8month extended mission magnetic fields and gammarays from lower orbits were measured in addition to this lowaltitude observations were carried out using a Terrain Camera a Multiband Imager and an HDTV camera New data pertaining to an intense magnetic anomaly and GRS data with higher spatial resolution were acquired to study magnetism and the elemental distribution of the Moon After some orbital maneuvers were performed by using the saved fuel the Kaguya spacecraft finally impacted on the southeast part of the Moon The Kaguya team has archived the initial science data and since November 2 2009 the data has been made available to public and can be accessed at the Kaguya homepage of JAXA The team continues to also study and publish initial results in international journals Science purposes of the mission and onboard instruments including initial science results are described in this overview

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