Japan’s ‘Moon Sniper’ mission lifted off Thursday morning. If the SLIM spacecraft successfully lands on the Moon, Japan would become only the fifth country in the world to accomplish so.
The H2-A rocket launched at 8:42 a.m. (2342 GMT Wednesday) with the precision ‘Moon Sniper’ lander, which is planned to arrive on the Moon’s surface in four to six months.
The launch from Tanegashima in southern Japan, which had been delayed three times due to severe weather, was watched online by around 35,000 people.
A research satellite created by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), NASA, and the European Space Agency was also aboard the rocket.
The launch comes after India landed a craft near the Moon’s south pole last month, a historic victory for the world’s most populous country and its low-cost space program.
The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) from Japan is meant to land within 100 meters of a specified target on the Moon, significantly shorter than the customary range of several kilometers.
“By creating the SLIM lander humans will make a qualitative shift towards being able to land where we want and not just where it is easy to land”, JAXA stated prior to the launch.
“By achieving this, it will become possible to land on planets even more resource-scarce than the Moon”, JAXA continued.
“Globally, there are no previous instances of pinpoint landing on celestial bodies with significant gravity such as the Moon”, JAXA added.
The Japanese rocket that launched Thursday also carried the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), which was built by JAXA, NASA, and ESA.
The satellite’s high-resolution X-ray spectroscopic measurements of the universe’s hot gas plasma wind will aid in the study of mass and energy movements, as well as the composition and evolution of celestial objects.
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