A Japanese spacecraft called SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) successfully entered the lunar orbit on Christmas Day, December 25, 2023, at 4:51 p.m. JST (or 07:51 UTC), according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
Here, JST stands for Japan Standard Time, which is 9 hours ahead of UTC,Coordinated Universal Time.
SLIM is scheduled to land on the lunar surface on January 20, 2024, at 12:20 a.m. JST (or 15:20 UTC on January 19). It will be Japan’s first ever moon landing. If it is successful, then Japan will be the fifth country after the Soviet Union, the U.S., China, and India to make a soft land on the lunar surface.
Currently, on December 25, the spacecraft is in a 4,000 km by 600 km elliptical orbit above the lunar surface, and it takes only 6.4 hours to orbit the moon once. This orbit will be lowered gradually until its descent towards the moon starts on January 20, 2024, at 12:00 a.m. JST.
The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) was launched with XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) on September 7, 2023, at 8:42 a.m. JST atop a H-IIA rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center, Japan.
The main objective of SLIM is to achieve a precise landing on the lunar surface with an accuracy of less than 100 meters. This will be a great achievement for space exploration because if SLIM is successful, we will be able to land where we want and not where it is easy to land.
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