Successful moon landing for the Japanese lunar lander

by Kantaro Komiya

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan has become the fifth nation to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon, the Japanese space agency (JAXA) said.

JAXA said the SMIM (Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon) lunar lander landed on the Moon’s surface around 15:20 GMT and re-established communications with Earth.

The agency, however, clarified that the vehicle’s solar panels were not able to produce electricity, believing that it was possible that they were incorrectly oriented.

“SLIM now only runs on its battery, and we are prioritizing the transfer of its data to Earth,” Hitoshi Kuninaka, director of the JAXA Space Laboratory, said at a press conference.

Nicknamed “Moon Sniper”, SLIM attempted to land within a radius of 100 meters from its target, where the precision of approach procedures is usually several kilometers.

“According to the data, SLIM certainly managed to land with (a radius of) accuracy of 100 meters,” Hitoshi Kuninaka said, adding that it would take about a month to verify it.

Japan is seeking to play a larger role in space, including partnering with the United States to counter China in space, and JAXA hopes to send one of its astronauts to the Moon as part of the program NASA Artemis.

The Japanese Space Agency was forced in March to destroy its new H3 medium-range rocket in flight, due to an ignition problem with one of the aircraft’s engines.

Japanese space missions, including the launch of SLIM, had been delayed due to the incident.

To date, only four nations have successfully landed a spacecraft on the Moon – the former Soviet Union, the United States, China and India.

(Reporting Kantaro Komiya; French version Camille Raynaud, edited by Nicolas Delame)