Japan becomes the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the moon

Japan has become the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the moon. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) successfully landed its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) spacecraft on the lunar surface on January 19, 2024.

The SLIM mission is a technology demonstrator developed to verify the performance of a new vision-based navigation system needed for precision Moon landings.

The spacecraft aimed to settle onto the lunar surface adjacent to a nearly 900-foot (270-meter) crater named Shioli, located in a region called the Sea of Nectar on the near side of the Moon.

The landing of SLIM made Japan the fifth country to soft-land a spacecraft on the Moon, following the Soviet Union, the United States, China, and India. The mission has achieved its minimum success criteria, even if SLIM falls silent.

The project was the fruit of two decades of work on precision technology by JAXA. SLIM, nicknamed “the Moon Sniper,” started its descent at midnight Saturday, and within 15 minutes it was down to about six miles above the lunar surface.