Japan counts down to lunar probe launch

By Teruaki Ueno

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan is preparing to launch this week its first lunar explorer, in a bid to get the country's space program back on track after a string of failures in the last decade.

Japanese scientists are also hoping the project will keep them one small step ahead of China and India, both of which are also planning lunar missions.

They say the 55 billion yen ($484 million) project to launch the three-tone Kaguya, also known as the Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE), is the world's most technically complex mission to the moon since the U.S. Apollo program decades ago.

"This is the first major step towards our goal of operating a manned space station on the moon by 2025," said Shinichi Sobue, senior engineer at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

"Kaguya will do the first job for Japan of orbiting an astronomical object other than Earth."

Nicknamed after a moon princess in an ancient Japanese fairy-tale, Kaguya consists of a main orbiter and two baby satellites equipped with 14 observation instruments designed to examine surface terrain, gravity and other lunar features for clues on the origin and evolution of the moon.

A Japanese H-2A rocket carrying Kaguya is to lift off from the tiny Pacific island of Tanegashima, some 1,000 km (620 miles) south of Tokyo, at 10:31 a.m. (0131 GMT) on Friday.

The lunar explorer is scheduled to separate from the rocket about 45 minutes after liftoff before orbiting the Earth twice and then traveling 380,000 km (237,500 miles) to the moon.

Kaguya also carries a high-definition television camera to shoot the Earth "rising" from the Moon's horizon, footage of which will be sent back to Earth. Kaguya will orbit the moon for about a year until it runs out of fuel.

The buildup hasn't all been smooth. The launch is about four years behind schedule due to rocket failures and technical glitches.

Japan's space program was in tatters in the late 1990s after two unsuccessful launches of a previous rocket, the H-2.

Disaster followed in 2003 when Japan had to destroy an H-2A rocket carrying two spy satellites minutes after launch as it veered off course.

KAGUYA HOLDS KEY

"We have revamped the rockets after the mishaps and things are in good shape now," JAXA's Sobue said. "As for the satellites, we have improved the quality to such a level that we don't expect to see similar failures."

But some experts say Japan may make an early exit from the space race with China and India if anything goes wrong.