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Heralded as the most advanced lunar exploration mission in more than 30 years, a sophisticated Japanese spacecraft is on the cusp of launching the first wave of a scientific assault on the moon to probe its history and prepare for future human voyages to Earth's celestial companion.

The pickup truck-sized spacecraft will be rolled to the launch pad early Thursday atop Japan's flagship H-2A rocket. After workers make connections between the booster and its oceanfront launch pad, officials will begin final testing of the rocket's systems before pumping thousands of gallons of chilled liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants into fuel tanks aboard the launcher.

Preparations for the launch continue to proceed as planned, according to a spokesperson with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA.

Clocks at the control center on Tanegashima Island are counting down to the scheduled launch time at 0131:01 GMT Friday (9:31:01 p.m. EDT Thursday). Blastoff will be in the late morning hours Friday in Japan.

Improperly installed parts aboard the Kaguya probe postponed the launch by a month as technicians replaced the suspect components. Bad weather earlier this week forced Japanese officials delay the flight an additional day because it interfered with work to prepare for the launch, according to JAXA.

The 174-foot-tall rocket will roar to life with the ignition of its LE-7A main engine in the final seconds of the countdown. Twin 50-foot-long solid rocket boosters will fire when the countdown clocks reach zero. Two smaller solid-fueled motors will ignite moments after the H-2A rocket vaults into the sky.

The H-2A will roll onto a path flying east of Tanegashima just seconds after liftoff, and the four solid rocket boosters will complete their job in the first two minutes of flight. The first stage will be shut down and jettisoned nearly seven minutes after launch, followed by ignition of the upper stage's LE-5B engine, which will power the rocket and payload into a preliminary parking orbit about 12 minutes into the mission.

After a speedy trip across the Pacific Ocean, the upper stage engine will fire again for about three-and-a-half minutes to extend the high point of its orbit to nearly 145,000 miles from Earth, or about three-fifths of the way to the moon. Deployment of the 6,360-pound satellite should occur off the west coast of South America about 45 minutes after liftoff.

Kaguya will deploy its solar panel and high gain antenna in the hours after the craft is released from the H-2A's upper stage. Next for the robotic explorer will be two burns to gradually raise its orbit over the next two weeks.

The science team will also check the $480 million mission's suite of 15 science instruments, which include two 110-pound daughter satellites and the first high-definition television camera to travel beyond Earth orbit.....

They wont go with Solar Sails. It will be with Reusable Nulear Propulsion Tugs (Fully Automated) They will dock with what is essentialy a space station of Mars Habitat landers every two years and push the two hundred thousand passengers out to Mars for their colonization wave.

It leaves in Mars orbit a torus of nodes (a kind of spacewheel) which are then anchored to a Martian Moon for Use as a Framework of Industrialization.

Lander Habs descend to Mars en mass.

The Tug returns for the next two hundred thousand passengers and does the same to them.

Jean-Yves Le Gall, the CEO of Arianespace, has every reason to brag, as he did in the Paris newspaper Le Figaro on August 17th. He proudly points to the fact that his firm has launched something like two thirds of all the operational commercial satellites. Ariane has recovered nicely from its early trouble with the Ariane 5 and it seems that they will continue to dominate the commercial satellite market for the foreseeable future.

There are lots of reasons for this, but Americans should not kid themselves: Ariane is not successful because the Europeans—and especially the French—provide it with government subsidies. All of the world’s operational launchers are, to one extent or another, subsidized by governments. Perhaps, if Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon series of rockets is successful, we will see the first unsubsidized space access system in human history.

On the other hand, the Europeans should not fool themselves: Ariane is not a success because it is technically superior to its competitors. Getting satellites into orbit is not easy, but it does not require the high degree of what may be termed “elegant engineering” that goes into an Ariane. The Atlas and the Proton launch vehicles get the job done just as effectively.