Two weeks after the Chandryaan-3 moon landing, Japan's 'Moon Sniper' SLIM Lunar Spacecraft was launched into space

Japan launched its lunar exploration spacecraft onto a domestic H-IIA rocket on Thursday, intending to become the world's fifth country to land on the Moon early next year. According to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the rocket blasted off as planned from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan and successfully deployed the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM). Last month, bad weather forced three postponements in a row.

Japan's "Moon sniper" mission intends to land SLIM within 100 meters of its target location on the lunar surface. After a lengthy, fuel-efficient approach trajectory, the $100 million (approximately Rs. 831 crores) mission is planned to begin landing in February.

"The main goal of SLIM is to demonstrate high-accuracy landing... to achieve 'landing where we want' on the lunar surface, rather than 'landing where we can,'" JAXA President Hiroshi Yamakawa said during a press briefing.

With its Chandrayaan-3 mission to the unexplored lunar south pole, India became the fourth nation to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon. Russia's Luna-25 lander crashed as it approached the Moon about the same time.

Japan's previous moon landing attempts failed last year. In November, JAXA lost communication with the OMOTENASHI lander and cancelled an intended landing. The Japanese company space's Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander crashed in April as it attempted to descend to the lunar surface.

SLIM will land on the Moon's near side near Mare Nectaris, a lunar sea visible from Earth as a black patch. Its main purpose is to put sophisticated optical and image processing technology to the test.

After landing, the ship will analyze the composition of olivine rocks around the landing locations in quest of clues regarding the Moon's origin. On SLIM, there is no lunar rover.

Thursday's H-IIA rocket also carried the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) satellite, a collaboration between JAXA, NASA, and the European Space Agency. The satellite's mission is to examine plasma winds moving through the universe, which scientists believe are critical to understanding the development of stars and galaxies.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries built and launched the rocket, which was the 47th H-IIA rocket Japan has launched since 2001, raising the vehicle's success rate to about 98 percent.

JAXA had put the H-IIA carrying SLIM launch on hold for many months as it probed the failure of its new medium-lift H3 rocket during its debut in March.

Other recent failures for Japan's space missions include the failure of the Epsilon small rocket to launch in October 2022, followed by an engine explosion during a test in July.

As part of NASA's Artemis program, the government hopes to send an astronaut to the Moon's surface in the later half of the 2020s.