31, Jul, 2010

Kaguya Crashes into Moon

Written by spacetravel.org

Friday, 12 June 2009 16:12

On June 10, 2009, at 18:25 GMT, Japan's Kaguya spacecraft crashed into the Moon after being in lunar orbit for over 18 months. The impact could be seen from the southern hemisphere of the Earth.

The controlled crash took place on the Moon's dark side, near the Terminator, the boundary between the dark side and the bright side.

Kaguya was launched on September 14, 2007 and had been in orbit about 100 kilometers above the moon collecting data about the moon, including its geography, its mineral distribution and its gravity levels. It provided the first HDTV images of the Moon's surface and of Earthrise and Earthset over the Moon, which JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, posted on YouTube.

The craft contained two subsatellites, one of which will continue to orbit the moon but will no longer perform scientific investigations.

Kaguya was named after a mythical princess of the Moon. It was originally known as SELENE, an acronym for Selenological and Engineering Explorer.

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