The Slim mission of the Japanese space agency Jaxa is ready for a historic landing on the Moon: scheduled for 4.20 pm Italian time, after about 20 minutes of descent towards the ground, its success would make Japan the fifth nation to succeed in the feat , after the United States, Russia, China and India.
Slim, an acronym for Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, has been nicknamed 'the sniper of the Moon': the lander, in fact, is designed for an unprecedented precision landing, aiming for an area of about 100 meters instead of the several kilometers usually necessary .
Success would repay Japan for its efforts, after two failed missions: the Omenotashi probe, launched in 2022 as part of NASA's Artemis 1 program, and that of the private startup iSpace, which crashed into our satellite last year.
Slim will try to reach a crater where the Moon's mantle, the layer beneath the crust, is believed to be accessible on the surface.
The possibility of studying these rocks could be crucial to better understand the origins of the Earth and its satellite.
The lander's precision will therefore be crucial as it attempts to land on uneven and rocky terrain.
Jaxa has already succeeded in similar feats with the asteroids Itokawa, visited in 2005 by the Hayabusa probe, and Ryugu, reached by Hayabusa 2 in 2018, but the challenge with the Moon is more complex, due to the greater force of gravity.
Once on the surface, Slim will have to release two experimental rovers: the first is equipped with some scientific instruments such as a thermometer and a radiation meter, while the second is a sphere slightly larger than a tennis ball equipped with a video camera.
The latter was developed together with the Japanese toy company Takara Tomy, and Jaxa wanted to focus on this aspect by also releasing a themed video game, the objective of which is the Moon landing.
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