The
Hiten Spacecraft (ひてん, ), given the English name
Celestial Maiden and known before launch as
MUSES-A (
Mu Space Engineering Spacecraft A), part of the MUSES Program, was built by the
Institute of Space and Astronautical Science of Japan and launched on January 24, 1990. It was Japan's first
lunar probe, the first robotic lunar probe since the Soviet Union's
Luna 24 in 1976, and the first lunar probe launched by a state other than the Soviet Union or the United States.