Europe's first moon mission blasts off successfully

Anyone have any more details on the mission or an ESA website we can monitor during the upcoming months for news of its progress?

Anyone know what the tasks are for the Indian and French satelites that are aboard?

Do you think this new solar-charged electrical propulsion is the first stepping stone to a manned flight to Mars?





Europe's first moon mission blasts off

KOUROU, French Guiana (Reuters) --Europe's first mission to the moon blasted off late on Saturday aboard a European Ariane rocket, space officials said.

The Ariane-5 rocket carrying the SMART-1 moon exploration probe and two commercial satellites blasted off at 8.14 p.m. (2314 GMT) from the European Space Agency (ESA) launch center at Kourou, in French Guiana on the northeast coast of South America.

Forty-one minutes after launch, the rocket released SMART-1 into space to begin a 15-month journey to reach lunar orbit. The 370 kg (815 lb) probe will scan the moon for up to 30 months.

SMART-1 will cover a distance of 100 million kilometers (62 million miles) to reach the moon with only 60 liters of fuel," Giuseppe RACCA, ESA Project Manager said before the launch.

"The main form of propulsion will be electric, charged by the satellite's solar panels," he said.

The probe will provide data on the still uncertain origin of the moon and has been described by ESA as an important instrument "to unraveling some of the secrets of our neighboring world."

"Thirty-five years after Apollo and the Russian missions, there remains much we don't know about the moon," David Southwood, ESA's Director of Scientific Programs, told a news conference in Kourou.

"With SMART-1 we can test propulsion in deep-space orbit. The next step, I hope, will be a Mars mission," he said.

ESA has hailed SMART-1 as an example of a 'faster, better, cheaper' mission costing only 110 million euros ($126 million) -- about one-fifth of a major ESA science mission. It is designed to operate in lunar orbit for up to 30 months.

The rocket also carries an INSAT 3-E satellite for the Indian Space Research Organization and e-bird for the Paris-based satellite operator Eutelsat.

Originally scheduled for launch earlier in the year, the mission was postponed due to technical problems aboard INSAT 3-E.



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