Just a few months following India’s achievement of becoming the fourth lunar power, Japan also had its sights on landing on our nearest celestial neighbor by January 2024.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, commonly known as JAXA, has garnered significant acclaim for its remarkable accomplishments in space exploration over the past three decades.
Notably, JAXA successfully conducted a sample-return mission from the Ryugu Asteroid, marking a historic achievement that had not been accomplished by any other nation, including the United States.
Recently, the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) spacecraft entered lunar orbit with JAXA successfully descending onto the lunar surface last January 20th at around 12:20 a.m.
SLIM is “a mission for researching the pinpoint landing technology necessary for future lunar probes and verifying this on the surface of the moon with a small-scale probe,” JAXA officials wrote in a mission description.
The goal is to achieve a pinpoint landing accuracy within 300 feet of a designated location. Departing from Earth on September 8th, the spacecraft embarked on its journey alongside XRISM, a high-powered X-ray telescope that continues to orbit Earth.
“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, as had been the case before,” they added.
“By achieving this, it will become possible to land on planets even more resource-scarce than the moon.”
Due to their success, they became the fifth nation behind China, India, the Soviet Union, and the US to land on the Moon.
See more about this incredible journey in the video below:
What are your thoughts? Please comment below and share this news!
True Activist / Report a typo
