Japan has landed a spacecraft on the moon, an attempt at the world’s first “pinpoint lunar landing.”
TOKYO (AP) — Japan became the fifth country in history to reach the moon when one of its spacecrafts without astronauts successfully made a soft landing on the lunar surface early Saturday. However, space officials said they needed more time to analyze whether the Smart Lander for Investigating...
Japan's robotic SLIM spacecraft will attempt to pull off the nation's first-ever moon landing on Friday morning (Jan. 19), and you can watch the action live.
but the spacecraft crashed in the final moments. Earlier this month, U.S. companyAstroboticgot its first moon mission off the ground but encountered problems shortly after launch. The flight was cut short and failed to make a lunar landing attempt. ...
Japan has become the fifth country to land a craft on the moon, but problems with its solar panels mean the mission hangs in the balance. Dubbed the "moon sniper", the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) probe was attempting a risky landing on a slope at the rim of a crater ...
JAXA has twice landed on asteroids, but the moon's gravity makes landing on it more difficult, its scientists said. Three missions to the moon by Japanese company ispace, Russia's space agency, and American company Astrobotic have failed in the past year. ...
The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) will, if successful, make Japan only the fifth country after the US, the Soviet Union, China and India to make a soft landing on the moon. It has been nicknamed “Moon Sniper” by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) because i...
The 8.8-foot-long (2.7 meters) spacecraft is set to touch down on the moon on Jan. 24. If SLIM's lunar landing is successful, it will make Japan the fifth country after the Soviet Union, the U.S., China, and India to make a lunar landing successfully. Related Stories: — ...
Shinichiro Sakai is JAXA's project leader for the lander. He said, "We proved that we can land wherever we want." Sakai hoped that it would bring more missions "to try to land on unexplored places on the moon." One of the lander's two main engines stopped working during the landing,...
On January 20, Japan Standard Time, the SLIM spacecraft, operated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), made history by successfully landing on the Moon's low latitude area near the Shioli Crater, in the vicinity of the Sea of Nectar region. The mission, launched aboard a H-...