The Planetary Society Blog
By Emily Lakdawalla
SELENE has a new name: Kaguya
Jun. 6, 2007 | 10:28 PDT | 17:28 UTC
Japan's space agency, JAXA, announced today that the official name of their lunar mission, to be launched in August, is Kaguya. Formerly known as SELENE, Kaguya consists of three spacecraft, a main orbiter and two much smaller one known as the Relay and VRAD satellites. The three-satellite design will allow Kaguya to make a highly detailed map of the gravity field of the Moon, giving key information to the Moon's interior.
I searched around the Internet for some references to the origin of the name Kaguya. Most of my initial searches with words including "moon" and "japan" and "princess" hit upon articles about the "Sailor Moon" cartoon, but eventually I found a couple of versions of the story of the Moon princess Kaguya Hime, also known as the tale of the bamboo cutter, which appears to date back at least to the 10th century, here and here. There's a pretty multimedia version of the story for kids here (which unfortunately loads rather slowly). The basic outline of the story is that an elderly bamboo cutter discovers a beautiful baby in a grove of bamboo, and he and his wife raise the girl as their own. The beautiful girl is courted by many suitors including the Emperor, but declines all offers of marriage, seeming increasingly sad. Finally she admits to her adopted parents that she is not human but rather was sent from the Moon, and that she must soon return to the Moon. Indeed, emissaries from the Moon come and return her to her homeland. It's a lovely name for Japan's first lunar mission. I wasn't aware of the story before, but it appears to be one that all Japanese would know. I'll have to buy a story book version to read to my daughter.
There's also an asteroid named 7991 Kaguyahime. I didn't find that either "Kaguya" or "Kaguyahime" has been used to name a feature on the surface of another planet or moon.
Japan has a tradition of referring to spacecraft by rather boring code names and then renaming them shortly before or after their launch. There was Muses-A, which became Hiten; Planet-A, which became Suisei; Planet-B, which became Nozomi; Muses-B, which became Haruka (but which is also apparently referred to by acronyms HALCA and VSOP); Solar-A, now Yohkoh; Muses-C, now Hayabusa; Solar-B, now Hinode; and now SELENE has become Kaguya. Other Japanese missions yet to be renamed include Planet-C, also known as the Venus Climate Orbiter or VCO -- this one will wind up with at least four different designations before it even launches! There's a Lunar-B lander in development, and apparently there is a MUSES-D under development as well. Kaguya (SELENE)Credit: JAXA |
These late name changes do create a bit of hassle, becuase of course the "SELENE" name has been used in all our URLs relating to the mission. I've run around the website making the name change in all the places I can think of -- hopefully I didn't miss anything! For more on the mission, please visit the Kaguya mission page.
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