BAKU, Azerbaijan — Japan’s SLIM spacecraft has accomplished a flyby of the moon as a part of a months-long deep space journey to establish a lunar landing attempt.
The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) lander made its closest approach to the moon at 2:47 a.m. Eastern, Oct. 4. It passed just below 5,000 kilometers from the lunar surface at a relative speed of 1.47 kilometers per second.
The spacecraft is now on an extended, looping orbit that can bring it back to the moon late within the 12 months. The orbit will allow it to enter lunar orbit in a more propellant-efficient manner than needing to perform an extended braking burn in the course of the recent flyby.
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) officials here on the 74th International Astronautical Congress say a landing attempt is anticipated in January.
SLIM launched Sept. 6 on a H-2A rocket from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center together with the XRISM space telescope. The SLIM spacecraft then went through a series of systems checks and orbit-raising maneuvers as a part of its circuitous voyage to the moon.
The spacecraft performed its translunar injection burn Sept. 30, firing its principal engines for 39 seconds, a post from JAXA’s SLIM social media account confirmed.
The principal objective of SLIM is to show a highly-accurate lunar soft-landing with a light-weight architecture.
The spacecraft has a dry mass of 200 kilograms and 700-730 kg wet mass. The expected development cost was 18 billion yen ($120 million).
The lander will aim to set down inside a 100 meters of its goal point on the slope of the mid-latitude Shioli crater. It features five crushable aluminum lattice legs which can help absorb the impact of landing and setting down on a slope.
It’ll use a vision-based navigation system and carries observational data from Japan’s SELENE orbiter launched in 2007. This technique might be used to discover its landing zone during its autonomous descent and landing.
The lander could lead on to lower cost exploration missions in the long run, in response to JAXA. The accuracy of landings might be useful for accessing areas of high scientific interest as an alternative of more general, safer landing zones.
If successful, SLIM would make Japan the fifth country to soft land on the moon. In August India became the fourth nation to attain the feat with its high latitude Chandrayaan-3 mission landing.
SLIM will not be the subsequent landing on the moon nonetheless. Houston-based Intuitive Machines this week unveiled its accomplished first lunar lander. The Nova-C lander is scheduled for a mid-November launch from Kennedy Space Center on a Falcon 9.
That spacecraft will embark on a direct, five-day journey to the moon and enter lunar orbit. It’ll try and set down in Malapert crater, 300 km away from the lunar south pole. A protected landing would make it the primary non-governmental spacecraft to successfully land on the moon.