Japan is Going to the Moon

apan has announced that it plans to send a lunar orbiter satellite to the moon sometime this summer.

Not wanting to fall behind China in the race to the moon, Japanese officials have announced they have plans to do more than just study the moon.

JAXA said the much delayed SELENE lunar satellite will be launched sometime in August, and this probe will be sent into space by the H-2A rocket. The H-2A rocket in the main rocket used in the Japanese space program.

Satoki Kurokawa, JAXA spokesman, said this mission is going to be a very ambitious one because it will involve observing the whole moon instead of just parts of the moon.

Japan is hoping this mission will be a stepping stone to one day landing on the moon along with other manned space missions. JAXA is hoping its "Wish Upon the Moon" campaign will make the Japanese public more aware of its pursuit of the moon. This campaign will allow people to send messages aboard the SELENE probe.

At one time, Japan led the Asian space race when they put the first Asian satellite in space back in 1972. However, Japan has now fallen behind the Chinese in the Asian space race.

China successfully launched a manned space flight in 2003. China followed up this fete in 2005 by having two astronauts orbit the Earth for a week. China now has plans for another manned space mission along with their planned mission of sending a moon probe.

China has also been successful in launching four satellites into space as part of their Compass global positioning navigation system which should be operational sometime in 2008.

However, for a country that prides themselves on their technological savvy, Japan has had one misstep after another in their space program.

These setbacks include losing communication with one of its four spy satellites, scrubbing a planned mission to Mars because their probe moved off course, and losing their Hayabusa probe that was supposed to bring back the first samples from an asteroid.

Japan did launch a moon probe back in 1990, but this probe did not orbit the moon like what SELENE is supposed to do.

It also looks like China and Japan are going to have some competition from to other Asians countries as well. In 2000, South Korea started building a rocket launch site with the help of Russia. South Korea is hoping to have a satellite in space by next year.

India is also getting into the Asian space race with hopes of launching their Chandrayaan-1 moon mission this year or next year.

Read more about the Asian space race by goint to Yahoo News