The Planetary Society of Japan : Column

This is the website of "The Planetary Society of Japan"

PS COLUMN ARCHIVE

March 25, 2009

Excellent performances of KAGUYA

There is an American weekly magazine called “Science” specialized in science. This is the weekly magazine that every scientist in the world definitely picks up every week to see what kinds of papers are introduced in there. In view of weekly publishing, it usually publishes the papers of high news value, because of which the magazine has the great merits to catch attention of a great number of scientists all over the world.

On the cover of Science issued on February 13, 2009, the image of Mare Moscovience taken by the terrain camera onboard Japanese lunar explorer KAGUYA was used. The image was introduced on the cover of nearly as large as A4 size strongly appealing to readers. The old craters of various shapes located in lunar farside are clearly shown in there. Specialists of planetary science will be very much excited by just looking at the picture on the cover.

Not only the cover image but also the four papers are introduced in the contents. Each one of them reports the results of the world first observation, which carries the valuable information with respect to studying lunar evolution. Those papers are posted on JAXA’s website:

http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2009/02/20090213_kaguya_j.html

The commentary article to make it more easily understood is also published in the Japanese science magazine “Newton” of May issue by the title of “Lunar evolution as revealed by KAGUYA”. I truly recommend you to read those publications regarding the great achievements by KAGUYA.

Those papers are based upon the observatory results obtained from each observation instrument installed onboard KAGUYA. In order to clear whole picture of lunar evolution, it is necessary to synthesize all the various factors of the observation results. I hope planetary researchers of this country will make fruitive achievements out of those valuable data.

KAGUYA is now carrying on its observations at the low altitude of 20 to 50 kilometers from February this year by lowering its altitude from the initial orbit of 100km. From low altitude the terrain cameras will be able to catch more detailed undulations of the terrain, but what is most highly expected is the observations by the magnetometer onboard KAGUYA. Some of the rocks on lunar surface are magnetized and so the magnetometer may find how those rocks are distributed. These data may help to understand mysterious phenomenon of magnetization of lunar rocks.

After the low altitude observation, KAGUYA is said to crash to the lunar surface around June this year. I wonder if or not we can see from earth the collision of the lunar explorer that has left glorious achievements. It might be possible to observe the sign of the crash from ground, because collision with the surface produces a crater of about several dozen meters in diameter, which will raise a cloud of sands and dusts. I really hope that the mission authority will find the method how we can observe the crash from ground by choosing the best observation hour and location.

Please send your comments, if any, to pscolumn@planetary.or.jp

(Translated by The Planetary Society of Japan)