On September 7th, Thursday Japan Launches Slim Moon Lander in the hope to make the nation’s first successful Moon landing. The live video of the launch was shared by the country’s space agency.
The project scheduled earlier for August 26th had been delayed many times due to uncertain weather conditions, finally launched on Thursday morning.
The Moon Lander, officially named (SLIM) Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, is designed to successfully land on the Moon’s surface within 100 meters of a particular target on the Moon. The main aim of the SLIM, Japan’s first moon landing mission, is to perform an accurate, pinpoint landing on the moon.
The precise “Moon Sniper” lander SLIM, was launched by the H-IIA rocket at 8:42 am (Wednesday) from the Tanegashima Space Center. The $100 million expedition is anticipated to land on the moon within four to six months.
As compared to Chandrayaan-3 of India which weighed around 1,750 kg, SLIM is relatively a very small spacecraft with a mass of only around 200 kg.
The H-IIA rocket carrying moon lander SLIM also carries a satellite, (XRISM) X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, which is designed for astronomical investigations. XRISM, a collaboration between JAXA and NASA is an X-ray space telescope project to make progress in the study of the development of the universe’s structure, outflows from galactic nuclei, and dark matter.
By 2017 the japanese moon lander, SLIM was supposed to launch in 2021, however due to some problems with SLIM’s companion XRISM satellite, this was postponed until 2023.
Japanese moon lander SLIM was separated from the rocket and placed in an Earth orbit after 47 minutes of the launch whereas, XRISM was released into its selected orbit after being detached from the rocket 14 minutes after the launch.
Over the following few days, the moon lander SLIM will undertake orbit-raising movements, exactly like Chandrayaan-3 did during its initial phase.
However, Japan’s national air and space agency JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) stated that ” The ground around the landing location slopes at around 15 degrees since it is close to a crater. As a result, the technique for landing safely is a crucial step”.
JAXA has also said that “the Japanese moon sniper SLIM will allow humans to make a qualitative change toward being able to land anywhere they want rather than only where it is easy to do so”.
The Indian Space Research organization (ISRO), which recently celebrated India’s historic moon landing mission near the South pole of the moon with Chandrayaan-3 also congratulated JAXA for the successful launch of the moon lander, SLIM and posted on social networking site ‘X‘ (previously Twitter) “Best wishes from the global space society for another successful moon mission.”
If the Japanese moon sniper SLIM spacecraft succeeds in its mission, Japan would be only the fifth country in history to successfully land on the Moon.
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