Japan’s SLIM ‘moon sniper’ lander arrives in lunar orbit

A Japanese spacecraft just took a huge step toward pulling off the nation’s first-ever moon landing, Space reported.

The spacecraft entered lunar orbit at 2:51 a.m. EDT (4:51 p.m. Japan Standard Time, 0751 GMT).

“The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is pleased to announce that the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) was successfully inserted into lunar orbit at 16:51 (Japan Standard Time, JST) on December 25, 2023,” JAXA officials wrote in an update. The spacecraft is in an elliptical orbit that takes 6.4 hours to circle the moon, coming within 373 miles (600 kilometers) of the lunar surface at its closest point and reaching out to 2,485 miles (4,000 km) at its farthest.

The milestone keeps SLIM on target to attempt a lunar touchdown on Jan. 19. Success in that endeavor would be historic; to date, only four nations — the Soviet Union, the U.S., China, and India — have soft-landed a craft on the moon.

The 8.8-foot-long (2.7 meters) SLIM launched on Sept. 6 along with XRISM, a powerful X-ray space telescope.

Both Japanese spacecraft deployed into Earth orbit, and XRISM remains there today. But SLIM left our planet’s gravity well on Sept. 30, beginning a long, circuitous, and energy-efficient route to the moon.

That trek came to an end today when SLIM inserted itself itself into lunar orbit. The probe will now start gearing up for its touchdown attempt, during which it will try to live up to its “Moon Sniper” nickname: SLIM aims to hit its landing-zone target with an accuracy of 330 feet (100 m) or less, paving the way for even more ambitious exploration efforts down the road.

AMK/PR