After a stressful day for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Japan has become the fifth ever country to successfully and softly land on the Moon, joining the ranks of the Soviet Union, China, India and the United States. This comes just after India successfully landed on the moon.
According to CNN, the Japan “Moon Sniper”, part of the uncrewed Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) made a soft contact with the lunar surface shortly after 7:30 a.m. PST Friday (12:30 a.m. Saturday Japan local time). It is called “Moon Sniper” because it is the most precise landing ever, landing a bit more than 100 yards from its target. The lander status was unclear for a little over an hour.
The Moon Sniper’s landing site is near the Shioli crater in the Sea of Nectar. It isn’t an actually sea, it is a low elevated plain on the lunar surface. The Sea of Nectar is a couple of miles south of the Sea of Tranquility, where Apollo 11 landed.
According to NPR, the main lander will eject a smaller spherical rover named SORA-Q.Sora (宙) means universe in Japanese and Q stands for quest. Takara Tomy, the creator of the Transformers toys, helped by making the rover small, light and transformable. SORA-Q’s spherical form is a bit larger than 3 inches in diameter. SORA-Q can traverse the different lunar terrains because it can “transform.”
Shortly after landing, the lander suffered an energy problem. JAXA is currently trying to fix the power issue, hoping that the sun will keep the lander alive.
