Europe's First Moon Mission Successful
By DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writer

BERLIN - A fuel-efficient, compact spacecraft has made it into lunar orbit,
signaling Europe's first successful mission to the moon and putting the
inexpensive probe on course to study the lunar surface, officials said
Tuesday.

Almost more impressive than reaching its destination was the slow and
steady way the SMART-1 craft puttered its way there — flying 13 months in
ever expanding circles around the earth using a cutting-edge ion propulsion
system.

The spacecraft used only 130 pounds of the 181 pounds of xenon fuel it had
aboard, according to European Space Agency spokesman Franco Bonacina in
Paris. That translates to more than 5 million miles per gallon.

The fuel consumption was less than expected, and the success of the mission
has raised hopes that the technology can be used to send other craft far
deeper into space, where the chemical propulsion systems that power
conventional rockets would be too expensive or unworkable.

"Europe has proved that it is able to fly a spaceship with ion propulsion
alone," Giorgio Saccoccia, one of the ESA's propulsion specialists, told
reporters at the ESA's control center in Darmstadt, in southern Germany.

Launched into Earth orbit from French Guiana on Sept. 27, 2003, atop a
conventional booster rocket, the SMART-1 probe made it to within 3,100
miles of the moon Monday, and will now begin spinning its way closer to the
surface as it orbits, Bonacina said.

By mid-January the dishwasher-sized spacecraft will be in an elliptical
orbit that will take it within 185 miles of the moon's south pole and 1,850
miles from the north pole, Bonacina said.

"Today we have celebrated the successful technology mission, and now we
start with science — we want to do imaging of the surface and study the
chemistry of the moon," Bonacina said.

The ESA is hoping to use state-of-the-art equipment to take images of the
surface from different angles and X-ray and infrared technology to allow
scientists to draw up new three-dimensional models of the moon's surface.

SMART-1 will also be looking at the darker parts of the moon's south pole
for the first time, and searching dark craters for signs of water, ESA
said.

Over the last 13 months, the 809-pound probe has been edging its way toward
the moon in a mission controlled from the ESA's operations center in
Darmstadt. It measures 3.3 feet on each side, and solar panels, which help
provide ion — or solar-electric — propulsion, spread 46 feet.

Unlike conventional rockets, no fuel is "burned"; instead, the solar panels
provide electricity to charge the xenon gas atoms, which accelerate away
from the spacecraft at high speed and produce forward thrust.

The surprising fuel efficiency of the spacecraft means that the agency
might be able to extend its six-month scientific mission by up to a year,
if it can find the additional funding, Bonacina said.

When the mission is eventually complete, the probe will crash onto the
moon's surface.

The mission marks the second time that ion propulsion has been used as a
primary propulsion system. The first was the Deep Space 1 probe launched by
NASA in 1998.

SMART-1, short for "Small Missions for Advanced Research and Technology,"
was developed for ESA by the Swedish Space Corporation with contributions
from some 30 contractors in Europe and the United States. It took off
aboard an Ariane-5 rocket in September 2003.

The total cost for the mission is $142.3 million, about a fifth of what is
required for a typical major space mission.

The success of the mission provides a much-needed boost for the European
space program, which is still smarting from its failed attempt to land a
probe on Mars last year.

The British-built Beagle 2 was launched on the ESA's Mars Express orbiter,
and was supposed to touch down on the Red Planet to begin its search for
life on Dec. 25, 2003, but scientists have found no trace of the lander.

As the project failed, two U.S. spacecraft landed on Mars and sent back
many pictures and extensive scientific data.

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