Tag Archives: HITEN
The Hiten Spacecraft (Japanese pronunciation: [hiteɴ]), given the English name Celestial Maiden and known before launch as MUSES-A (Mu Space Engineering Spacecraft A), part of the MUSES Program, was built by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science of Japan and launched on January 24, 1990. It was Japan’s first lunar probe, the first robotic lunar probe since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 in 1976, and the first lunar probe launched by a country other than Soviet Union or the United States. Hiten was designed to be an Earth to Moon orbiting spacecraft and testing into deep space maneuver using swing-by to the Moon and aerobraking of the Earth. The spacecraft entered a Double Moon swing-by orbit and released a small orbiter, Hagoromo (named after the feather mantle of Hiten), into lunar orbit at the first swing-by to the Moon. The transmitter on Hagoromo failed (the only mission payload of Hagoromo is a beacon transmitter, so it is small error to ISAS). ISAS considered Hagoromo to…