NATION IN BRIEF : FLORIDA : U.S., Japan Launch Joint Space Mission

NASA launched a rocket with a Japanese satellite that will swing by the moon and be flung by lunar gravity nearly a million miles into space. Scientists will use the satellite to explore the tail of the magnetosphere, a comet-shaped region surrounding Earth and containing the radiation belts. The region extends nearly 3 million miles from Earth; the satellite will venture only as far as 871,000 miles. The $160-million, four-year mission is a joint project between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Japanese Institute for Space and Astronautical Science. NASA supplied the Delta rocket launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida and some scientific instruments, and Japan provided the satellite, called Geotail. The satellite’s first encounter with the moon will come in early September. Until then, the craft will be in an elliptical Earth orbit.