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,
International Cometary Explorer ICE carries 13 scientific instruments to measure plasmas, energetic particles, waves, and fields. , five were known to be functional. It does not carry a camera or imaging system. Its detectors measure high energy particles such as X- and gamma-rays, solar wind, plasma and cosmic particles. A data handling system gathers the scientific and engineering data from all systems in the spacecraft and formats them into a serial stream for transmission. The transmitter output power is five watts. International Cometary Explorer The International Cometary Explorer (ICE) spacecraft (designed and launched as the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3 (ISEE-3) satellite), was launched August