re japanese moon landing in article c ldod pc news cso uiuc edu rls uihepa hep uiuc edu writes allow it to go into lunar orbit without large expenditures of fuel to slow down the idea is that natural objects sometimes get captured without expending fuel we ll just find the trajectory that makes it possible the originator of the technique said that nasa wasn t interested but that japan was because their probe was small and couldn t hold a lot of fuel for deceleration actually hiten wasn t originally intended to go into lunar orbit at all so it indeed didn t have much fuel on hand the lunar orbit mission was an afterthought after hagoromo a tiny subsatellite deployed by hiten during a lunar flyby had a transmitter failure and its proper insertion into lunar orbit couldn t be positively confirmed it should be noted that the technique does have disadvantages it takes a long time and you end up with a relatively inconvenient lunar orbit if you want something useful like a low circular polar orbit you do have to plan to expend a certain amount of fuel although it is reduced from what you d need for the brute force approach all work is one man s work henry spencer u of toronto zoology kipling henry zoo toronto edu utzoo henry
