Japan Station: the Japanese Experiment Module (Kibo) was added to the station during Space Shuttle assembly flights in 2008. The space probe "Akatsuki" was launched May 20, 2010, and achieved orbit around Venus on December 9, 2015. Japan's plans in space exploration include: developing the "Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter" to be launched in 2018; and building a moon base by 2030. On September 14, 2007, it launched lunar explorer SELENE (Selenological and Engineering Explorer) on a H-IIA (Model H2A2022) carrier rocket from Tanegashima Space Center. SELENE is also known as Kaguya, after the lunar princess of "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter".
Explorer 33 Explorer 33 Explorer 33 (also known as AIMP-D, IMP-D, AIMP 1, Anchored IMP 1, Interplanetary Monitoring Platform-D) was a spacecraft in the Explorer program launched by NASA on July 1, 1966 on a mission of scientific exploration. Originally intended for a lunar orbit, mission controllers worried that the spacecraft's trajectory was too fast to guarantee lunar capture. Consequently, mission managers opted for a backup plan of placing the craft into an eccentric Earth orbit with a perigee of 265,679 km and an apogee of 480,762 km — still reaching distances beyond the Moon's orbit. Despite not attaining the intended lunar