Kaguya End of Mission Plan Detailed

In a statement from Susumu Sasaki, who took over as Project Manager of Japan's Kaguya lunar orbiter in October, a short extension and end of mission plan has been accounced. Kaguya, which has delivered to the ground outstanding High Definition Television images and billions of bytes of science data from its suite of instruments since 2007, is to be deorbited before next Summer.

Before this guided impact is performed, however, extended mission planners are planning to bring the orbiter, and its subsatellites, down into a much lower orbit in order to add to our state of knowledge of the Moon's crustal magnetic anomalies.

Sasaki's Statement was posted to the web Dec. 12, and can be read HERE.