Exploration of the Moon with the Hiten spacecraft, becoming the third country to place an object in orbit around the Moon. The spacecraft released the Hagoromo probe into lunar orbit, but the transmitter failed, thereby preventing further scientific use of the spacecraft. In September 2007, Japan launched the SELENE spacecraft, with the objectives "to obtain scientific data of the lunar origin and evolution and to develop the technology for the future lunar exploration", according to the JAXA official website. The European Space Agency launched a small, low-cost lunar orbital probe called SMART 1 on September 27, 2003. SMART 1's primary goal was to take
Drag and Atmospheric Neutral Density Explorer Drag and Atmospheric Neutral Density Explorer DANDE (or Drag and Atmospheric Neutral Density Explorer) is a 50 kg class spacecraft developed by the University of Colorado Boulder was the winner of the 5th iteration of the Air Force Research Laboratory's University Nanosat Program. Due to a failure in a spacecraft system, the ground team was uanable to actively command the satellite and spacecraft became just a passive object in Earth orbit by which some passive drag characteristics might be deduced. DANDE launched on September 29, 2013 and correctly separated from the launch vehicle. After a month of assessing spacecraft health,