In 1998, Japan launched Nozomi ("Hope") from Kagoshima Launch Centre, the country's fourth “deep space” mission, trying to become the third nation (after Russia and the U.S.) to reach for Mars. The mission was designed to measure the interaction between the solar wind and Martian upper atmosphere. The spacecraft made two fly-bys of the Moon in Sep and Dec. Due to an equipment malfunction, that attempt failed to reshape its trajectory for an intended arrival in a highly elliptical Mars orbit in Oct 1999. More technical problems, including equipment damage by powerful solar flares and diminished fuel, plagued a revised plan to alter the spacecraft's trajectory to orbit Mars by 2003, and the original mission was abandoned. The probe flew by Mars on 14 Dec 2003 and was steered into a heliocentric orbit of the Sun.«[Image: NASA artist's impression of Nozomi orbiter at Mars.]