PM Modi congratulates Japan for its successful lunar mission
| 2024-01-21
Japan successfully lands its spacecraft ‘SLIM’ on the Moon on January 20, 2024
Japan has become the fifth country in the world after the US, Russia, China, and India to make its spacecraft have a complete lunar touchdown
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday congratulated Prime Minister of Japan Fumio Kishida for JAXA's first soft Moon landing.
“Congratulations Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and everyone at JAXA on achieving Japan's first soft Moon landing. India looks forward to our cooperation in space exploration between ISRO and JAXA,” PM Modi posted on X.
He further said that the India Space Research Organisation (ISRO) looks forward to cooperating with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in space exploration.
On Saturday, Japan became the fifth country in the world after the US, Russia, China, and India when its spacecraft made a complete lunar touchdown. Despite this the success of the moon landing has come with a caveat—the spacecraft is currently powered on battery life, which can last for just a few hours.
However, the Japanese space agency said that even if solar cells of the spacecraft are not restored, the mission will still be called successful as it demonstrated a high-precision landing on the Moon.
The Japanese space agency also said that it will be analysing the data in the coming days to understand what happened with the spacecraft after its landing on the Moon started.
Equipped with vision-based navigation technology, the Japanese spacecraft called ‘SLIM’ autonomously adjusted its trajectory during descent by matching preloaded images from Japan's Kaguya lunar orbiter with real-time photographs of the Moon's surface.
This allowed the lander to pinpoint its location and navigate to the precise landing site, a process managed by specialized image processing algorithms developed by Jaxa.
The landing site near Shioli crater was selected for its scientific potential. Data suggests the presence of olivine, a mineral that could provide insights into the Moon's mantle and contribute to our understanding of lunar formation and evolution.
SLIM also carried unconventional rovers, including the hopping Lunar Excursion Vehicle 1 (LEV-1) and the baseball-sized LEV-2, developed in collaboration with Tomy, Sony, and Doshisha University. These rovers are equipped to traverse the challenging lunar terrain and conduct scientific investigations.
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