Dubbed the "moon shooter", SLIM is preparing for a historic landing that will make Japan the fifth country to successfully launch a spacecraft to the moon.
The spacecraft successfully entered lunar orbit in late December 2023. It is scheduled to descend to an altitude of 15 kilometers above the moon's surface at 3 p.m. on January 19, 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 lander to the moon on September 7, 2023.
The spacecraft will then begin its final descent early on January 20, performing a two-stage stabilization landing on a sloping patch of land near Shioli Crater, on the moon's western side.
Japan is pushing to play a bigger role in space, working with close ally the United States to compete with China's military and technological capabilities.
If successful, Japan will join the US, Russia, China and India in completing a lunar mission. India made headlines around the world in August 2023 when its Chandrayaan-3 mission successfully landed a spacecraft on the moon’s south pole, a region that humans have yet to fully understand.
A successful landing would also provide a much-needed boost to Japan’s space ambitions. The country boasts a number of space startups and aims to send astronauts to the moon in the future.
However, JAXA has faced many obstacles. The most recent was the failure of its attempt to launch the H3 rocket to put a spacecraft into space in March 2023, in a race with commercial rocket providers such as SpaceX (USA).
Still, JAXA stressed that its high-precision technology will be a powerful tool in future exploration of the lunar poles. Japan also plans to jointly explore the lunar polar region with India by 2025.
Professor Kazuto Saiki of Ritsumeikan University (Japan), who developed SLIM's near-infrared camera, will analyze the moon rocks after collecting samples here.
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