LUNAR-A
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LUNAR-A
LUNAR-A is a cancelled Japanese spacecraft project that was originally scheduled to be launched in August 2004. After many delays (primarily due to potential thruster faults), the project was eventually cancelled in January 2007. It was planned to be launched on a Japanese M-V rocket from the Kagoshima Space Center. History The vehicle would have been cylindrical, with a diameter of 2.2 m and a height of 1.7 m. It would have had four solar panels and was engineered to be spin-stabilized. Plans called for it to enter an elliptical orbit around the Moon, and deploy two penetrators at an altitude of 40 km on opposite sides of the lunar body. The penetrators were to have been braked by a small rocket at an altitude of 25 km, then free fall to the surface. They were designed to withstand a collision speed of 330 meters per second to deeply penetrate the lunar regolith. Once the penetrators deployed, the LUNAR-A spacecraft was mission-planned to maneuver to an orbi ...
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Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
The is the Japanese national air and space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology development and launch of satellites into orbit, and is involved in many more advanced missions such as asteroid exploration and possible human exploration of the Moon. Its motto is ''One JAXA'' and its corporate slogan is ''Explore to Realize'' (formerly ''Reaching for the skies, exploring space''). History On 1 October 2003, three organizations were merged to form the new JAXA: Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), the National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan (NAL), and National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA). JAXA was formed as an Independent Administrative Institution administered by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC). Before the merger, ISA ...
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JAXA
The is the Japanese national air and space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology development and launch of satellites into orbit, and is involved in many more advanced missions such as asteroid exploration and possible human exploration of the Moon. Its motto is ''One JAXA'' and its corporate slogan is ''Explore to Realize'' (formerly ''Reaching for the skies, exploring space''). History On 1 October 2003, three organizations were merged to form the new JAXA: Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), the National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan (NAL), and National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA). JAXA was formed as an Independent Administrative Institution administered by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC). Before the merger, ISA ...
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Elliptical Orbit
In astrodynamics or celestial mechanics, an elliptic orbit or elliptical orbit is a Kepler orbit with an eccentricity of less than 1; this includes the special case of a circular orbit, with eccentricity equal to 0. In a stricter sense, it is a Kepler orbit with the eccentricity greater than 0 and less than 1 (thus excluding the circular orbit). In a wider sense, it is a Kepler's orbit with negative energy. This includes the radial elliptic orbit, with eccentricity equal to 1. In a gravitational two-body problem with negative energy, both bodies follow similar elliptic orbits with the same orbital period around their common barycenter. Also the relative position of one body with respect to the other follows an elliptic orbit. Examples of elliptic orbits include: Hohmann transfer orbit, Molniya orbit, and tundra orbit. Velocity Under standard assumptions, no other forces acting except two spherically symmetrical bodies m1 and m2, the orbital speed (v\,) of one body travel ...
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Japanese Space Probes
Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspora, Japanese emigrants and their descendants around the world * Japanese citizens, nationals of Japan under Japanese nationality law ** Foreign-born Japanese, naturalized citizens of Japan * Japanese writing system, consisting of kanji and kana * Japanese cuisine, the food and food culture of Japan See also * List of Japanese people * * Japonica (other) * Japonicum * Japonicus * Japanese studies Japanese studies (Japanese: ) or Japan studies (sometimes Japanology in Europe), is a sub-field of area studies or East Asian studies involved in social sciences and humanities research on Japan. It incorporates fields such as the study of Japanese ... {{disambiguation Language and nationality disambiguation pages ...
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Missions To The Moon
As part of human exploration of the Moon, numerous space missions have been undertaken to study Earth's natural satellite. Of the Moon landings, Luna 2 of the Soviet Union was the first spacecraft to reach its surface successfully, intentionally impacting the Moon on 13 September 1959. In 1966, Luna 9 became the first spacecraft to achieve a controlled soft landing, while Luna 10 became the first mission to enter orbit. Between 1968 and 1972, crewed missions to the Moon were conducted by the United States as part of the Apollo program. Apollo 8 was the first crewed mission to enter orbit in December 1968, and it was followed by Apollo 10 in May 1969. Six missions landed humans on the Moon, beginning with Apollo 11 in July 1969, during which Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the Moon. Apollo 13 was intended to land; however, it was restricted to a flyby due to a malfunction aboard the spacecraft. All nine crewed missions returned safely to the Earth. While the ...
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Exploration Of The Moon
The physical exploration of the Moon began when '' Luna 2'', a space probe launched by the Soviet Union, made an impact on the surface of the Moon on September 14, 1959. Prior to that the only available means of exploration had been observation from Earth. The invention of the optical telescope brought about the first leap in the quality of lunar observations. Galileo Galilei is generally credited as the first person to use a telescope for astronomical purposes; having made his own telescope in 1609, the mountains and craters on the lunar surface were among his first observations using it. NASA's Apollo program was the only program to successfully land humans on the Moon, which it did six times. The first landing took place in 1969, when Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong placed scientific instruments and returned lunar samples to Earth. The first unmanned landing on the far side of the Moon was made by the Chinese spacecraft Chang'e 4 in early 2019, which s ...
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Future Lunar Missions
As part of human exploration of the Moon, numerous space missions have been undertaken to study Earth's natural satellite. Of the Moon landings, Luna 2 of the Soviet Union was the first spacecraft to reach its surface successfully, intentionally impacting the Moon on 13 September 1959. In 1966, Luna 9 became the first spacecraft to achieve a controlled soft landing, while Luna 10 became the first mission to enter orbit. Between 1968 and 1972, crewed missions to the Moon were conducted by the United States as part of the Apollo program. Apollo 8 was the first crewed mission to enter orbit in December 1968, and it was followed by Apollo 10 in May 1969. Six missions landed humans on the Moon, beginning with Apollo 11 in July 1969, during which Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the Moon. Apollo 13 was intended to land; however, it was restricted to a flyby due to a malfunction aboard the spacecraft. All nine crewed missions returned safely to the Earth. While the U ...
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Regolith
Regolith () is a blanket of unconsolidated, loose, heterogeneous superficial deposits covering solid rock. It includes dust, broken rocks, and other related materials and is present on Earth, the Moon, Mars, some asteroids, and other terrestrial planets and moons. Etymology The term ''regolith'' combines two Greek words: (), 'blanket', and (), 'rock'. The American geologist George P. Merrill first defined the term in 1897, writing: Earth Earth's regolith includes the following subdivisions and components: * soil or pedolith * alluvium and other transported cover, including that transported by aeolian, glacial, marine, and gravity flow processes. * "saprolith'", generally divided into the ** ''upper saprolite'': completely oxidised bedrock ** ''lower saprolite'': chemically reduced partially weathered rocks ** ''saprock'': fractured bedrock with weathering restricted to fracture margins * volcanic ash and lava flows that are interbedded with unconsolidated material * ...
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Photovoltaic Module
Photovoltaics (PV) is the conversion of light into electricity using semiconducting materials that exhibit the photovoltaic effect, a phenomenon studied in physics, photochemistry, and electrochemistry. The photovoltaic effect is commercially used for electricity generation and as photosensors. A photovoltaic system employs solar modules, each comprising a number of solar cells, which generate electrical power. PV installations may be ground-mounted, rooftop-mounted, wall-mounted or floating. The mount may be fixed or use a solar tracker to follow the sun across the sky. Photovoltaic technology helps to mitigate climate change because it emits much less carbon dioxide than fossil fuels. Solar PV has specific advantages as an energy source: once installed, its operation generates no pollution and no greenhouse gas emissions, it shows scalability in respect of power needs and silicon has large availability in the Earth's crust, although other materials required in PV system man ...
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M-5 Rocket
The M-V rocket, also called M-5 or Mu-5, was a Japanese solid-fuel rocket designed to launch scientific satellites. It was a member of the Mu family of rockets. The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) began developing the M-V in 1990 at a cost of 15 billion yen. It has three stages and is high, in diameter, and weighs about . It was capable of launching a satellite weighing into an orbit as high as . The first M-V rocket launched the HALCA radio astronomy satellite in 1997, and the second the Nozomi Mars explorer in July 1998. The third rocket attempted to launch the Astro-E X-ray satellite on 10 February 2000 but failed. ISAS recovered from this setback and launched Hayabusa to 25143 Itokawa in 2003. The following M-V launch was the scientific Astro-E2 satellite, a replacement for Astro-E, which took place on 10 July 2005. The final launch was that of the Hinode (SOLAR-B) spacecraft, along with the SSSat microsat and a nanosatellite, HIT-SAT, on 22 Septe ...
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Kagoshima Space Center
The is a space launch facility in the Japanese town of Kimotsuki, Kagoshima Prefecture. Before the establishment of the JAXA space agency in 2003, it was simply called the (KSC). All of Japan's scientific satellites were launched from Uchinoura prior to the M-V launch vehicles being decommissioned in 2006. It continues to be used for suborbital launches, and has also been used for the Epsilon orbital launch vehicle. Additionally, the center has antennas for communication with interplanetary space probes. History Established in February 1962, the Kagoshima Space Center (KSC) was constructed on the Pacific coast of Kagoshima Prefecture in Uchinoura (now part of Kimotsuki) for the purpose of launching large rockets with probe payloads. Prior to establishment of KSC, test launches of the Pencil Rocket, Baby Rocket and Kappa Rocket had been performed at the pioneering Akita rocket test facility ( Michikawa) from the mid-1950s to the 1960s. However, progress in rocket developme ...
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Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspapers and broadcasters. The AP has earned 56 Pulitzer Prizes, including 34 for photography, since the award was established in 1917. It is also known for publishing the widely used '' AP Stylebook''. By 2016, news collected by the AP was published and republished by more than 1,300 newspapers and broadcasters, English, Spanish, and Arabic. The AP operates 248 news bureaus in 99 countries. It also operates the AP Radio Network, which provides newscasts twice hourly for broadcast and satellite radio and television stations. Many newspapers and broadcasters outside the United States are AP subscribers, paying a fee to use AP material without being contributing members of the cooperative. As part of their cooperative agreement with the AP, most ...
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