Japan’s SLIM mission entered the lunar orbit, this mission is the first soft and precise mission of Japan which was launched on 7 September 2023 It successfully landed on the moon’s surface on 19 January at 15:20 UTC, Now Japan became the fifth nation to land a spacecraft on moon.
The SLIM Lander’s solar panels are not currently facing the Sun, resulting in a lack of power generation. Consequently, the Lander is relying on its battery reserves to sustain its operations until the battery is depleted.
The SLIM ( Smart Lander for Investigating Moon ) is a unique mission in the world because Japan’s space agency JAXA launched this mission through the “rideshare” method. In this method, JAXA launched the SLIM spacecraft with another X-ray satellite (XRISM) that was successfully placed in 550 LEO. This marks the first instance where a space agency has used the same launch vehicle for two distinct missions.
Landing of Japan’s SLIM Mission
The existing elliptical polar orbit, measuring 600km x 4000km, will undergo a reduction process to first achieve a 600km circular polar orbit. Subsequently, it will be further adjusted to a 15km x 600km landing orbit, setting the stage for the planned landing sequence.
Landing of the SLIM spacecraft will be vision-based AI-assisted and pin-pointed. This vision-based landing technology will be used in future Martian landing missions.
You will be amazed after reading the full article SLIM: Japan’s Chandrayaan 3 like mission to the Moon. In this article, you learn unconventional paths, objectives, details of payloads, two-step landing, and missions after the landing of Japan’s SLIM Mission.
