Japan landed on moon successfully after India and China

The space agency JAXA of Japan has just announced that its Slim Moon spacecraft has successfully landed on the lunar surface. According to JAXA, Japan has landed within 100m of its designated destination on the moon, a new “pinpoint” landing.

The mission is “Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (Slim).” It has made Japan the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the moon. However, the spacecraft appears to be experiencing technical issues as it has been unable to generate electricity on the lunar surface since landing.

The Lunar Excursion Vehicle 2 (LEV-2 / SORA-Q) has successfully taken an image of the #SLIM spacecraft on the Moon. LEV-2 is the world’s first robot to conduct fully autonomous exploration on the lunar surface. https://t.co/NOboD0ZJIr pic.twitter.com/mfuuceu2WA
— JAXA Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (@ISAS_JAXA_EN) January 25, 2024

JAXA stated that spacecraft batteries were running low as it had been communicating with Earth since landing. According to JAXA, this problem may be due to the spacecraft landing at the wrong angle. As its solar panels do not face the sun.

Scientists looked to maximize the time they could undertake with Slim by collecting as much data from the moon as possible before its batteries ran out.

However, the spacecraft has fulfilled one of its primary objectives, landing precisely on the lunar surface inside a 100-m radius target. It is a usual target as previous Moon landers have achieved radius targets of kilometers.

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Japan launched the Slim spacecraft to the Moon via Mitsubishi Heavy H2A rocket in Sep 2023. It first orbited Earth before entering into the Moon orbit on Dec 2023.

The mission control officials for JAXA kept saying they were checking its status. They would let them know soon since their communication was established with Slim.

Then, officials confirmed that they had established communication with Slim. Today, they announced that Slim had landed successfully on the moon, reaching their designated “pinpoint” landing. Before Japan, the United States, the Soviet Union (Russia), China, and India landed on the moon.