Japan is officially the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the moon. According to the Japanese space agency, the SLIM lunar lander managed to make a soft landing on Earth’s satellite on Saturday (local time).
We had to tremble until the end: even when the landing process went as planned and the telemetry data showed that the unmanned lunar probe SLIM had landed on the Earth’s satellite after a journey of more than four months, we still had to wait. For several minutes it was unclear whether the ‘Smart Lander for Investigating Moon’ had survived the landing unscathed.
Highly accurate landing intended
Subsequently, Japan’s space agency JAXA said a soft landing had been successful. A particularly ambitious goal was to land the probe, nicknamed the ‘Moon Sniper’, within a radius of just a hundred meters. According to JAXA, it could take more than a month to verify that this precision goal has been achieved.
Data important for Artemis project
If all goes according to plan, SLIM will examine moon rocks and look for water on the neighboring celestial body in the coming months. The data Japan collects on the moon will be used as part of the US-led Artemis project. The goal of this project is to return humans to the moon by 2025 and advance research on Earth’s satellite.
Source: Krone
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