SMART-1 represents Europe's first lunar mission and will provide some significant advances to many issues currently active in lunar science, such as our understanding of lunar origin and evolution. The mission also contributes a step in developing an international program of lunar exploration. The spacecraft will be ready for launch in spring 2003, as an Ariane 5 Auxiliary passenger to GTO, and a cruise phase of 15-18 months to the Moon.

Three remote sensing instruments, D-CIXS, SIR and AMIE, will be used during the mission's nominal six months in lunar orbit, and these will return data that will be relevant to a broad range of lunar studies. The mission will provide the first global X-ray map of the Moon, global high spectral resolution NIR spectrometry, high spatial resolution colour imaging of selected regions. With a perilune near the lunar south pole, the South Pole-Aitken Basin (SPA) is a prime target for studies using the SMART-1 suite of instruments. Combined, these will aid a large number of science studies, from bulk crustal composition and theories of lunar origin/evolution to the search for cold traps at the lunar poles and the mapping of potential lunar resources.

Acknowledgements

Thanks are extended to the Co-Investigators of the SMART-1 Science and Technology Working Team (STWT), to the members of the SMART-1 project and industrial teams that have prepared the spacecraft and various aspects of the mission.

	Operations, Data Archiving and Integration
	References