Comparison of Asian national space programs to fuel future energy demands in Asia. All three main Asian space powers plan to send men to the Moon in the distant future and have already sent lunar probes. Japan was the first Asian country to launch a lunar probe. The Hiten (Japanese: "flying angel") spacecraft (known before the launch as MUSES-A), built by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science of Japan, was launched on 24 January 1990. In many ways, the mission did not go as was planned. Kaguya, the second Japanese lunar orbiter spacecraft, was launched on 14 September 2007. China launched its first lunar probe,
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,