* Astronomy

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RE: SELENE mission

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Kaguya lunar orbiter

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RE: SELENE mission

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Japanese spacecraft Kaguya will crash into the moon at around midnight Wednesday and the impact, followed by flashes of light, will be visible from the earth to the naked eye, a scientist said here.
The 2,600 kg spacecraft will slam into the moons surface at a speed of over 6,000 km per hour on its southeastern side, according to Bharat Adur, the director of the Akashganga Centre for Astronomy and a former senior scientist with the Nehru Planetarium.

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The Japanese lunar orbiter Kaguya has completed a productive operational phase and will conclude its scientific mission with a controlled impact on the lunar surface, scheduled for 20:30 CEST today.
The impact is expected to occur on the near-side of the Moon, in the dark area close to the limb, at lunar coordinates 80°E and 64°S.
ESA's SMART-1 team have prepared maps of the Kaguya landing site using survey images obtained by the SMART-1 AMIE camera. The images show that the satellite's final orbit and impact site lie in an ancient cratered highland.

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Rough location of impact

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UPDATE:
Expected impact date:        18:25, June 10, 2009 (GMT) Near side, night time area
Expected impact location:                     80.4º East, 65.5º South
Lunar phase & age on impact date:     17.3 (London)

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The Japanese Kaguya lunar orbiter is scheduled to impact onto the Moons surface on the south-eastern limb (80º East, 63º South), at 18:30 UT, 10th June, 2009.
The impact should be visible from Asia and Australia.

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Japan's Kaguya lunar orbiter has beamed home a spectacular movie of Earth eclipsing the sun as seen from the moon.
Kaguya caught the stunning sight on Feb. 10 and used its high definition camera to record the moment when the Earth looked like a diamond ring.
This HDTV moment in time and space came when a penumbral lunar eclipse occurred and the view of the sun from the Kaguya was mostly covered by the Earth, thus the Earth looked like a diamond ring. The moon's limb, hidden by darkness, obscures part of the lower portion of the ring.

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The Japanese lunar explorer KAGUYA (SELENE) has been operating since nominal operations started in December 2007 to elucidate the origin and evolution of the Moon. Four KAGUYA research reports using observation data from the Terrain Camera onboard the KAGUYA and a perspective titled "Seeing the Missing Half" were published as part of a KAGUYA special edition in Science Magazine dated February 13, 2009.
This special edition, which is featured on the cover page, is epoch-making and succeeds the special issues of planetoid explorer "HAYABUSA" in June 2006 and the solar observation satellite "HINODE" in December 2007.

The titles of the research reports in Science magazine that aim to provide new knowledge to stimulate the study of the origin and evolution of the Moon are as follows:
1) Lunar Radar Sounder Observations of Subsurface Layers under the Nearside Maria* of the Moon
2) Farside Gravity Field of the Moon from the Four-way Doppler Measurements of the SELENE (Kaguya)
3) The Lunar Global Shape and Polar Topography Derived from Kaguya-LALT Laser Altimetry
4) The Long-lived Volcanism on the Lunar Farside Revealed by the SELENE Terrain Camera

* The relay satellite "OKINA (RSTAR)" made an impact on the lunar surface on February 12, 2009 (JST), and the four-way Doppler measurement mission was successfully completed.
* Mare (Plural maria): Any of the large and low-lying dark areas on the Moon. The lunar maria is believed to consist of volcanic basalts.

Source JAXA