Japan's Moon lander achieves successful soft landing, resumes operations
touchdown made Japan only the fifth nation to achieve a soft lunar landing, after the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and India. But after the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) touched down, JAXA had said that it could not confirm that the lightweight craft's solar batteries were generating power. SLIM, which was aiming to hit a very small target, is a lightweight spacecraft about the size of a passenger vehicle.
It was using “pinpoint landing" technology that promises far greater control than any previous moon landing. While most previous probes have used landing zones about 10 kilometers (six miles) wide, SLIM was aiming at a target of just 100 meters (330 feet). The project was the fruit of two decades of work on precision technology by JAXA.
The mission's main goal is to test new landing technology that would allow moon missions to land “where we want to, rather than where it is easy to land," JAXA has said. If the landing was a success, the spacecraft would seek clues about the origin of the moon, including analyzing minerals with a special camera. The SLIM, equipped with a pad to cushion the impact, was aiming to land near the Shioli crater, near a region covered in volcanic rock.
The closely watched mission came only 10 days after a moon mission by a US private company failed when the spacecraft developed a fuel leak hours after the launch. SLIM was launched on a Mitsubishi Heavy H2A rocket in September. It initially orbited Earth and entered lunar orbit on December 25.Milestone Alert!
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