Japan's SLIM Mission Aims For Maiden Lunar Touchdown

Japan’s Moon-lander mission called the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM), took off Thursday morning.

This will be Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s maiden attempt at a lunar landing. A private Japanese company's prior attempt, undertaken in May this year, had failed.

If the SLIM spacecraft successfully lands on the Moon, Japan would be only the sixth country in the world to accomplish so.

Scheduled to make a landing in four to six months, if successful, SLIM would be the smallest and lightest spacecraft to land on the Moon.

The H-IIA rocket that launched the SLIM into space also carried an X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), an astronomical satellite. Fourteen minutes after launch, XRISM was separated from the rocket and placed in its planned orbit.

XRISM will conduct high-resolution X-ray spectroscopic investigations of the hot gas plasma wind that blows through galaxies.