Japanese Lunar Exploration Program km on opposite sides of the lunar body. The penetrators were to have been braked by a small rocket at an altitude of 25 km, then free fall to the surface. They were designed to withstand a collision speed of 330 meters per second to deeply penetrate the lunar regolith. Once the penetrators are deployed, the LUNAR-A spacecraft was mission-planned to maneuver to an orbital altitude of 200 km above the lunar surface. The craft was to have carried a monochromatic imaging camera with a resolution of 30 m. It was to be Japan's first large scale lunar probe. (Hiten
Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere a month however. Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere The Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) is a satellite to conduct a 26-month study of noctilucent clouds (NLCs). It is the ninetieth Explorer program mission and is part of the NASA-funded Small Explorer program (SMEX). On April 25, 2007 AIM was boosted into a high polar orbit by a Pegasus-XL rocket, which was air-launched from the Lockheed L-1011 "Stargazer" aircraft operated by Orbital Sciences. The AIM satellite is a , by spacecraft, powered by two solar arrays, carrying three instruments: The noctilucent clouds AIM is to study, also known