Sat, Apr 05, 2003 Smart-1 To Use Ion Propulsion System It relies
on the sun to power it on a mission to the moon. Europe's first
lunar probe was unveiled Thursday by the European The craft,
known as the Smart-1, will be launched in July for a two-year
mission orbiting the moon to look for water, believed to be
hidden deep in craters on the lunar surface. The satellite will
also gather evidence to test the theory that the moon was
created when a giant asteroid struck Earth during the early days
of the Light Weight But No Lightweight Weighing just 815 pounds
(370 kilograms) and costing $108 million, the craft is part of a
European strategy to build spaceships smaller and more cheaply
than NASA. Smart-1’s solar-powered ion engines provide only a
minuscule thrust, but can be run over a much longer period than
the traditional chemical rocket thrusters used by earlier
spacecraft. The technology was tested on NASA’s Deep Space 1
probe, which was launched in 1998 and was sent past an asteroid
and a comet. Scientists