Japan anxiously awaits good news from the moon

Dubbed the "moon shooter," SLIM is preparing for a historic landing, making Japan the fifth nation to successfully launch a spacecraft to the moon.

The spacecraft successfully entered lunar orbit in late December 2023. According to plan, it will descend to an altitude of 15 km above the lunar surface at 3 PM on January 19th, according to The Japan Times.

The H-IIA rocket was launched from the Tanegashima Space Center on Tanegashima Island (southwest Japan) to carry Japan's lunar lander to the moon on September 7, 2023.

The spacecraft will then begin its final landing attempt in the early morning of January 20th, performing a two-stage, stable landing on a sloping area near the Shioli crater, on the western side of the moon.

Japan is striving to play a larger role in space, cooperating with its close ally the United States to compete with China's military and technological capabilities.

If successful, Japan would be the next country after the United States, Russia, China, and India to complete a lunar mission. In August 2023, India made headlines worldwide after its Chandrayaan-3 mission successfully landed a spacecraft on the moon's south pole, a region not yet fully understood by humans.

A successful landing would also provide much-needed impetus to Japan's space development goals. The country boasts several space startups and aims to send astronauts to the moon in the future.

However, JAXA has faced numerous setbacks. Most recently, it failed in its attempt to launch its H3 rocket into space in March 2023, in a race against commercial rocket providers such as SpaceX (USA).

Nevertheless, JAXA emphasizes that its high-precision technology will become a powerful tool in future lunar pole exploration . Japan also plans to conduct a joint lunar polar exploration with India in 2025.

Professor Kazuto Saiki of Ritsumeikan University (Japan), who developed SLIM's near-infrared camera, will analyze lunar rocks after collecting samples there.

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