European spacecraft enters lunar orbit

BERLIN -- A small spacecraft has made it into lunar orbit, signaling Europe's first successful mission to the moon and paving the way for the craft to be used to study the lunar surface, a European Space Agency spokesman said Tuesday.\nThe SMART-1 probe made it to within 3,100 miles of the moon Monday morning and will now begin spinning its way closer to the surface as it orbits, said ESA spokesman Franco Bonacina from the space agency's headquarters in Paris.\nBy mid-January the dishwasher-sized spacecraft will be in an elliptical orbit that will take it within 185 miles of the moon's south pole and 1,850 miles from the north pole, Bonacina said.\n"Today we have celebrated the successful technology mission, and now we start with science -- we want to do imaging of the surface and study the chemistry of the moon," Bonacina said.\nOver the last 13 months, the 809-pound probe has been puttering toward the moon in a mission controlled from the ESA's operations center in Darmstadt, Germany. It measures 3.3 feet on each side, and its solar panels, which help provide ion -- or solar-electric -- propulsion, spread 46 feet.\nTo reach the lunar orbit, it used only 130 pounds of the 181 pounds of xenon fuel it had aboard -- less than expected -- and a feat that has raised hopes the technology can be used to send other crafts longer distances.\n"It works out to something like 1.24 million miles per quarter gallon, which is quite an achievement," Bonacina said.\nFor this mission, the surprising fuel efficiency of the spacecraft means the agency might be able to extend its six-month scientific mission by up to a year, if it can find the additional funding, Bonacina said.