Japan clear it’s way to became the fifth country in the world to land on the moon early next year after launching its lunar exploration mission on Thursday aboard a homegrown H-IIA rocket. Notably the launch of rocket comes just after India successfully launched Chandrayaan-3.
According to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the rocket successfully launched the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) from Tanegashima Space Centre in southern Japan. Last month, unfavourable weather caused three postponements in a row.
Aim of “moon sniper” mission
Japan’s “moon sniper” mission aims to land the SLIM spacecraft only 100 metres from the targeted area on the lunar surface. By February, the $100 million expedition should have arrived at the moon.
With its Chandrayaan-3 mission to the unexplored lunar south pole, India became the fourth country to safely land a spacecraft on the moon two weeks prior to the launch.
In the previous year, Japan’s previous two lunar landing efforts were unsuccessful. A November attempt at a landing was postponed when JAXA lost communication with the OMOTENASHI lander. In April, the Japanese startup ispace 9348.T’s Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander crashed while attempting to touch down on the moon.
The X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) satellite is also launched on Thursday by the H-IIA rocket.
launched by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries 7011.T
The rocket was built and launched by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries 7011.T. This was the 47th H-IIA rocket that Japan has launched since 2001, raising the vehicle’s success rate to about 98 percent.
While it looked into the failure of its brand-new medium-lift H3 rocket during its debut in March, JAXA had put the launch of H-IIA carrying SLIM on hold for a while.
The launch failure of the Epsilon small rocket in October 2022, followed by an engine explosion during a test in July, were additional recent setbacks for Japan’s space programmes.
In the late 2020s, the nation intends to send astronauts to the moon.
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