| Summary: | The Hiten Spacecraft, given the English name Celestial Maiden and known before launch as MUSES-A (Mu Space Engineering Spacecraft A), part of the MUSES Program , was built by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science of Japan and launched on January 24, 1990. It was Japan's first lunar probe, the first robotic lunar probe since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 in 1976, and the first lunar probe launched by a country other than Soviet Union or the United States . Hiten was designed to be an Earth to Moon orbiting spacecraft and testing into deep maneuver space using swing-by to the Moon and acrobraking of the Earth. The spacecraft entered a Double Moon swing-by orbit and released a small orbiter, Hagoromo (named after the feather mantle of Hiten), into lunar orbit at the first swing-by to the Moon. The transmitter on Hagoromo failed (the only mission payload of Hagoromo is a beacon transmitter, so it is small error to ISAS). ISAS considered Hagoromo to have succeeded by optical observation from earth. After tenth Swing-by to the Moon and second aero-braking mission, (the final mission that was planned before launching) Hiten had some fuel to change her orbit. An additional mission was designed by Edward Belbruno and ISAS. This low energy lunar transfer used Weak Stability Boundary Theory. This, however, would take several months instead of several days. Lastly, Hiten went into circumlunar Moon orbit. A B Hiten successfully demonstrated acrobraking technique on March 19 and 30, 1991.
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