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
Explorer 31 Explorer 31 Explorer 31 (also called DME-A) was an American satellite launched as part of the Explorers program of NASA. Explorer 29 was launched on 29 November 1965 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, United States, with Thor Agena rocket. Explorer 31 was released along with the Canadian satellite Alouette 2. Explorer 31 was a small ionospheric observatory instrumented to make direct measurements of selected ionospheric parameters at the spacecraft. Since the spacecraft had no tape recorder, data could be observed at the spacecraft only when the spacecraft was in sight of the telemetry station and when commanded on. Experiments