SLIM
- SCI & TECH
News:
Japan’s Moon mission
takes off, expected to land next February
What's
in the news?
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After several weather-related
postponements, Japan’s Moon-lander mission, called SLIM, finally took off.
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A successful landing on the Moon by the
SLIM spacecraft would make Japan only the fifth country in the world to do so.
Smart
Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM):
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It is a compact robotic moon lander with no astronauts aboard.
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Called ‘Moon Snipper’ in the Japanese language, it has lightweight
equipment for advanced observations and adaptable landings on resource-scarce
planets, advancing exploration strategies.
Features:
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SLIM would be the smallest and lightest spacecraft to land on the Moon.
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The H-IIA
rocket that took the SLIM in space also carried an X-Ray Imaging and
Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), a satellite meant for astronomical observations.
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The SLIM spacecraft was detached from the
rocket 47 minutes after the launch and deposited in an Earth-orbit where it
will perform orbit-raising manoeuvres over the next few days just like
Chandrayaan-3 did in its initial phase.
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This is the first Moon-landing attempt being made by Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency (JAXA).
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SLIM is a pretty small spacecraft,
weighing just about 200 kg.
○
In comparison, the Chandrayaan-3 lander
module weighed about 1,750 kg.
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The main objective of SLIM is to demonstrate precision landing, within
100 metres of the chosen site.
XRISM:
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XRISM was separated from the rocket 14
minutes after the launch and deployed in its intended orbit.
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XRISM will perform high-resolution X-ray
spectroscopic observations of the hot gas plasma wind that blows through the
galaxies, and its studies would focus on determining mass-energy flows,
composition and evolution of celestial objects.