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
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