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Old June 10th 09, 07:20 AM posted to sci.space.history,sci.space.policy
Pat Flannery
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Posts: 18,465
Default Japanese Moon probe to impact tomorrow



OM wrote:

SELENE Orbital Elements:
--------------------------------------
Inclination 90°
Orbital period 2h
Operational Apoapsis 100 km
Operational Periapsis 100 km

...Note that original plans called for SELENE to continue on an
extended mission until mid-August of this year. However, due to the
degraded performance of a reaction wheel, on February 1, 2009, the
orbit was lowered to 50 km ± 20 km, and the mission will now end with
a lunar surface impact at around 1:30pm CST June 10th - which means
after tomorrow, SELENE becomes a part of Space History, and deservedly
so!

...For more info on SELENE:

Vandal-free Wikipedia Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SELENE

Official JAXA Program Site:
http://www.selene.jaxa.jp/index_e.htm

SELENE Official YouTube Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/jaxachannel

...Personally, I've hyped this as JAXA's crowning achievement to date,
and those of us who've followed the mission have really enjoyed the
visual results. The real question now is whether next week's launch of
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will produce results equally as
spectacular as SELENE's. If LRO manages to achieve one specific
imaging goal - the highest resolution of the Apollo landing sites ever
made from Lunar orbit - then it may win by default just for putting
one more corncob up the collective butts of the Moon Hoax Morons, if
not a poisoned spear through the heart


The asteroid sample return mission was bitting of more than JAXA could
chew, but that of course went for NASA's Rangers 1-6 also.

P.S. I get international sensitivity bonus points for not titling this
thread "Jap Moon Probe Starts Kamikaze Dive". :-)

Pat