Asia’s race to the Moon began today when Japan successfully launched an unmanned lunar probe, the most ambitious mission of its kind since the United States' Apollo missions in the late sixties and 1970s.

The lunar orbiter Kaguya, named after a Moon princess in a Japanese fairytale, was launched today from Japan’s space centre on the small southern island of Tanegashima. The 55 billion yen (£240 million) Selenological and Engineering Explorer (Selene), to give it its full name, will orbit the Earth twice before beginning a 20-day, 237,500-mile journey to establish an orbit around the Moon.

It is the first in a series of lunar exploration programmes by Asian nations. China expects to launch the lunar orbiter Chang’e-1 by the end of the year, and India’s Chandrayaan-1 is scheduled for lift-off next year, when the US will also launch its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The three-tonne Kaguya will orbit 60 miles above the Moon for a year before it runs out of energy, and will deploy two small 50kg satellites, equipped with 14 different observation instruments and high-definition cameras to scrutinise the terrain, measure the gravity and search for hydrogen.

Information gathered by the probes will be used to draw conclusions about the Moon's origin and evolution.

The success of the launch is a welcome morale-raiser for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa), which has ambitions to send astronauts to the Moon by 2025. The H-2 rocket which successfully carried the Kaguya has suffered repeated failures. In 2003, the agency suffered humiliation when two spy satellites had to be destroyed remotely minutes after take-off because they had strayed off course.

The launch of the Kaguya was four years behind schedule, and was delayed again last month when faulty components were found inside the orbiter. The first 12 launches of the latest H-2A model were undertaken by the space agency. But today's undertaking was carried out for the first time by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the manufacturer of the rocket.

“This programme is very important for science throughout the world,” said Hajime Inoue, Jaxa’s director of space research. “If it is completed successfully, it will push back the frontiers of humanity beyond Earth and heighten Japan’s technological status.”

Satoki Kurokawa, a spokesman for the Agency, said: “Japan aims to build a station on the surface of the Moon in 2025 and so we need to understand the Moon. We need to develop the fundamental technology. China and India’s scope of observation is different from ours. They do not plan to focus on gravitational attraction, surface layer and magnetic pull — three areas I think Kaguya can excel in.”

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