Japan hopes to be about to join an exclusive club that includes only four other countries that have successfully carried out a “soft” landing on the moon.
Its garden shed-sized Smart Lander for Lunar Investigation, or SLIM, isn't the largest or most ambitious robotic mission to our satellite — but it seeks to be the most precise when it launches today.
The Japanese space agency, JAXA, knows it won't be easy.
The moon has acquired new craters in the past six months thanks to the failure of a Russian and then a Japanese robotic mission to achieve a landing.
Just yesterday a American lunar probe It crashed back to Earth after failing to reach moon.
The final stage of descent, in which the moon's gravity grabs hold of SLIM as it descends to the surface, “is expected to be a breathless, numbing terror for 20 minutes,” said Koshiki Kenji, SLIM mission subproject manager.
Nicknamed the “Moon Sniper” by JAXA, SLIM aims to land in an area roughly the same size as Trafalgar Square.
The Japanese SLIM is approximately the same size as a garden shed
That may not sound impressive – but NASA The Apollo landers targeted areas several kilometers across—even recent robotic missions lacked the ability to choose and maneuver their landing zone with great precision.
SLIM uses technology and experience gained from JAXA's bold Hyabusa2 mission, which successfully landed on the asteroid Ryugu in 2018.
It is loaded with images of the lunar surface from various spacecraft orbiting the Moon to give it very precise data to determine its landing site and precise radar navigation to help find it.
Read more:
Discovery of a new mysterious object in the Milky Way
Scientists discover the oldest black hole ever
Astronomers produce a large star cluster image
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency says the successful landing moves lunar missions from the era of “landing where we can” to “landing where we want.”
Japan lacks the financial heft and missile launching capabilities that the United States, China, the former Soviet Union and now have India All of which achieved a successful soft landing on the moon.
But she hopes that a range of new technologies on SLIM, from lightweight ceramic rocket thrusters to computer vision algorithms, will provide a competitive advantage in lightweight accuracy.
It is also deploying two highly experimental rovers.
A jack-in-the-box probe is designed to jump onto the moon's surface. A spherical robot transformed into an exploration vehicle equipped with a small camera will attempt to photograph the landing site.
It was designed by the Japanese toy company Tomy, which created Transformer toys.
With more countries interested in heading to the moon in search of resources such as water that could be used for future bases on its barren surface, the ability to land the latest lightweight technology with precision could make Japan a major player in conquering the moon. moon.
