Japan Enters Moon Race

Festina lente (“hurry slowly” or “don’t do things in haste” – ed.). A famous Latin phrase attributed to Emperor Augustus may well define Japan’s space program. After a series of delays caused by “inadequate meteorological conditions,” the Japanese H-IIA launch vehicle with a lunar lander and satellite on board was finally successfully launched from the Tanegashima Space Center on September 7. The launch was originally scheduled for August 26.

Japan has all the prerequisites to become the fifth country in the world to land on the Moon, after the Soviet Union, the USA, China, and India. But we will know about this only in 3 to 4 months. This is how long it takes to complete the space “journey” to the Moon (384,467 kilometers from Earth) for the Japanese automatic station that will moon-land the descent vehicle called Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM). The mission program was expanded to space-based analysis with the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission satellite (XRISM) that carried a revolutionary X-ray telescope.

The Japanese space launch follows the success of a similar Indian program. The New Delhi Chandrayaan-3 mission was launched into space on July 14, 2023, followed by the Vikram descent vehicle landing on August 23 near the south pole of our satellite with the Pragyan mini-rover on board (26 kg on Earth and only 4.29 kg on the Moon). After exploring the lunar surface on September 6, the Pragyan rover was put into hibernation mode to save power during the long lunar night that will last until September 22. “The Pragyan rover is parked safely next to the Vikram lander. We hope for their awakening around September 22, 2023,” said a representative of the Indian space agency ISRO.