FOUR decades after Russian and US spacecraft started exploring the moon, the European Space Agency has launched its first lunar mission. But SMART-1 is not in a hurry. The tiny craft, which launched last weekend, is making the slowest ever trip to the moon, taking 15 months to arrive, compared with the five-day journeys of NASA's Apollo missions in the 1960s and 70s.
The Europeans have been able to take advantage of the lunar knowledge already gathered by NASA to plan the £77 million project, which is part of ESA's programme of "smaller, faster, smarter" missions - in pointed contrast to NASA's ill-fated "faster, better, cheaper" mantra. The probe's progress over the next few years will show whether it merits the "smart" tag.
Smart-1 is going slow because it is testing a solar-powered ion engine in preparation for a more ambitious trip to Mercury. It has already unfurled its solar ...
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