LONDON: European scientists are about to reach for the moon. After a 13-month journey, driven by a new kind of technology, an experimental spacecraft the size of a washing machine will begin to orbit around the moon on Monday night.

Smart-1 has been drifting away from Earth in ever-increasing orbits, driven by a form of electrochemical propulsion called ion drive. This produces a jet 10 times as powerful as any chemical rocket. But it also means a spacecraft can carry less fuel.

So the 370kg spacecraft has been kicked along by an intermittent pressure of just seven grams - about equal to the weight of a sheet of paper in the palm of the hand - on its slow journey to the moon.

Smart-1 is now closing on the moon at 3km a second. It is at a kind of gravitational portal, where the pull of the two celestial bodies is equal. On Monday night, its ion drive engines will ignite again and begin a slow, gentle push to take the spacecraft into orbit.

In the course of the next year, Smart-1 will take a new look at the moon in an attempt to investigate lunar history. Theories suggest the moon formed billions of years ago, from molten rock thrown off the Earth after a collision with a Mars-sized object. The ratio of iron and magnesium in the lunar crust could confirm that the moon is, in effect, a daughter of the Earth.

Smart-1 (the acronym for Small Missions for Advanced Research and Technology) could be a scouting party for more ambitious attempts. Two Japanese missions could reach the moon in 2006; Chinese and Indian spacecraft could arrive in 2007; the US could revisit in 2008.

European scientists are contemplating a "robot village" on the lunar surface: a collection of shelters, instruments and exploration vehicles, perhaps on a ridge at the lunar south pole which is in sunlight all year round.

"It's a place with a very compatible environment," said Bernard Foing, chief scientist for the European Space Agency. "If you go to the equator, you have a temperature from day to night going from 120C to minus 170C. On the pole you have a very comfortable minus 20C." -Dawn/The Guardian News Service.