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,
Orbital Mechanics for Engineering Students Control theory and spacecraft control systems are less thoroughly covered. The textbook includes exercises at the end of each chapter, and supplemental material is available online, including MATLAB code for orbital mechanics projects. Orbital Mechanics for Engineering Students Orbital Mechanics for Engineering Students is an aerospace engineering textbook by Howard D. Curtis, in its third edition . The book provides an introduction to orbital mechanics, while assuming an undergraduate-level background in physics, rigid body dynamics, differential equations, and linear algebra. Topics covered by the text include a review of kinematics and Newtonian dynamics, the two-body problem, Kepler's laws of planetary