A Japanese rocket carrying a small lunar lander lifted off on Thursday (September 7th), after three postponements since late August due to adverse weather conditions, according to an official launch video streamed live on YouTube.
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The H-IIA rocket took off on Thursday as scheduled at 8:42 a.m. Japanese time (2342 GMT Wednesday) from the Jaxa launch base in Tanegashima (southwest Japan). On board was a small lunar module: the SLIM (for Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon) and nicknamed “Moon Sniper”. It is supposed to test, within four to six months, a high precision moon landing technology, at a maximum of 100 meters from its target against several kilometers usually. XRISM, an astronomical satellite developed jointly by Jaxa, the American NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) for an X-ray imaging and spectroscopy mission, is also on the trip.
A sign of the enthusiasm generated by this dual mission, takeoff was followed live by more than 35,000 people on YouTube.
This is a new attempt by Japan to land a spacecraft on the Moon, which would be a great first for the country and a welcome success for Jaxa, its space agency which has experienced a series of failures since the launch. last year. Japan had notably tried last November to land a mini-probe on the Moon, on board the American mission Artemis 1. But communication with Omotenashi (“Hospitality”) had been lost shortly after the ejection of this probe in space, due to a failure of its batteries.
India succeeded last month to land its first spacecraft on the Moon. Before her, only the United States, the Soviet Union and China had already achieved such a feat. Russia has just failed in a new attempt, its Luna-25 probe having crashed on August 19 on the lunar soil. And in April this year, a young private Japanese company, ispace, failed to land its lunar module, which probably also crashed.
(AFP)