Japan’s SLIM lander is about to touch down on the surface of the moon

Japan is preparing for its first moon touchdown. The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) is scheduled to touch down on the lunar surface on 19 January. If all goes effectively, this may make Japan the fifth nation to land a spacecraft on the moon, following the US, the Soviet Union, China and India.

SLIM launched in September 2023 and took a swooping, elongated path to the moon to save on gas. It entered lunar orbit in December, and since then it has been taking photographs of the surface and slowly reducing its altitude in preparation for touchdown.

The spacecraft’s touchdown expertise is terribly exact, garnering it the nickname “moon sniper”. It is designed to match the photographs from its on-board cameras to information from different lunar spacecraft to decide its location, then autonomously navigate to its actual touchdown spot. “[It] is expected to be a breathless, numbing 20 minutes of terror,” stated Kushiki Kenji, one of the mission’s managers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), in an announcement.

If this works, it’s going to set the stage for future missions to land precisely the place they’re meant to as an alternative of inside just a few tens of sq. kilometres of the most well-liked spot, as they do now. “Lunar orbiters… have provided large amounts of high-resolution observation data of the lunar surface,” Kushiki stated. “Therefore, interest in lunar science and resource exploration has shifted from ‘somewhere on the Moon’s surface’ to ‘that rock next to this specific crater’.”

Once the spacecraft lands, it’s going to launch a pair of rovers, every with a brand new and unusual technique for getting round the lunar surface. Lunar Excursion Vehicle 1 (LEV-1) is designed to hop round as an alternative of trundling alongside on wheels like conventional rovers, and LEV-2 is a sphere somewhat smaller than a tennis ball, designed by a toy producer to roll throughout the floor and take photos. The lander itself additionally carries scientific devices to examine the space round the crater that it is concentrating on for its touchdown.

This touchdown is half of a bigger worldwide effort to discover the moon. India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander reached the lunar surface in August 2023, however there have additionally been a sequence of failures: the Japanese firm ispace despatched a lander that crashed final April, the Russian Luna 25 craft did the similar in August and extra just lately the US firm Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander suffered a gas leak that led to a failure to get to the moon. If this mission succeeds, it may mark the second that lunar exploration will get again on the proper observe.