Japan's lunar orbiter set for 13 Sept

Japan's space agency said Wednesday the largest lunar mission since the U.S. Apollo program is now on track for a Sept. 13 launch following the completion of repairs to its much-delayed lunar probe.

The Selenological and Engineering Explorer aka SELENE. Probe was to have been launched aboard one of the space program's mainstay H-2A rockets on Aug 17. But JAXA discovered during an inspection last month that some condensers were improperly installed on the two smaller satellites that accompany the main orbiter.

The probe would have been unable to carry out one of its 14 projects - measuring the moon's gravity field if the condensers malfunctioned during the mission.

The 32-billion yen (US$272 million; €200.13 million) SELENE is already four years behind schedule. Japan launched a moon probe in 1990, but that was a flyby mission, unlike SELENE, which is intended to orbit the moon.

It canceled another moon shot, LUNAR-A, that was to have been launched in 2004 but had been repeatedly postponed due to mechanical and fiscal problems.

The SELENE project is the largest lunar mission since the U.S. Apollo program in terms of overall scope and ambition, outpacing the former Soviet Union's Luna program and NASA's Clementine and Lunar Prospector projects.

It involves placing the main satellite in orbit at an altitude of about 100 kilometers and deploying the two smaller satellites in polar orbits. Researchers will use data gathered by the probes to study the moon's origin and evolution.

The main orbiter will remain in position for about a year.