From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: japanese moon landing?
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 14

In article <C5Kys1.C6r@panix.com> dannyb@panix.com (Daniel Burstein) writes:
>A short story in the newspaper a few days ago made some sort of mention
>about how the Japanese, using what sounded like a gravity assist, had just
>managed to crash (or crash-land) a package on the moon.

Their Hiten engineering-test mission spent a while in a highly eccentric
Earth orbit doing lunar flybys, and then was inserted into lunar orbit
using some very tricky gravity-assist-like maneuvering.  This meant that
it would crash on the Moon eventually, since there is no such thing as
a stable lunar orbit (as far as anyone knows), and I believe I recall
hearing recently that it was about to happen.
-- 
All work is one man's work.             | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
                    - Kipling           |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
