Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Kaguya Crashes

I'm a little behind the times on this one, but a couple of weeks ago, the Japanese spacecraft SELENE (nicknamed Kaguya) crashed into the lunar surface. This was a controlled collision that was complete after the orbiter successfully finished its 20-month mission studying the moon.
Kaguya orbited the moon elliptically, so that its oval-shaped path brought it closer and then farther from the lunar surface. Originally at a 100 km - 800 km orbital distance from the surface, it gradually got closer, first to a 50 km circular orbit, and then to a 20 km - 100 km elliptical orbit, eventually crashing into the moon.
The following is an image taken by Kaguya moments before it hit:

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