Singha wrote:Kayuga was probably a wolfpack beast of a satellite: was hurled by their biggest H2-x launcher.
Once near the moon, Kaguya will split into three satellites; a 3-ton main orbiter which will orbit the planet at an altitude of 100km, and the smaller Relay and VRAD Satellites, which will orbit and gather information about the poles.
One of the neatest aspects of the Kaguya mission is its inclusion of a High Definition Television camera to send back movies of the Earth from the Moon. This means that we will be able to see the Earth-rise from the Moon's horizon!
One of the satellite is RSTAR which is actually a relay satellite that relays transmission from Earth to Selene [or Kayuga]. The other satellite measures the gravitational field. The RSTAR satellite was put in place since Japan does not have the DSN like India does, that is another difference between Change' and Chandrayaan.
As much as what goes on in the space, the network on the ground matters! IDSN can track satellites as far as Mars and it will take time to test it and get familiarized with it.
For short testing IDSN was used to track some ESA space probes as well and that experience is valuable, which was gained because ISRO cooperated and provided "free ride" to ESA experiments. Same with NASA.
The other value of IDSN is that it can be "rented" out for tracking other countries space probes, namely NASA, ESA, JAXA and Russian and why not Chinese as well! That will be valuable experience when you send your probe to Mars and have to wait for 8 minutes or so for it your signal to reach there and 8 minutes or so for the signal from there to arrive!
Not to undermine JAXA, Hi Def cameras are good but they do not fill in the data provided by mini-SAR and a complete 3D stereo mapping of Moon's surface, particularly on the far side of moon which is more interesting ...