We show you our most important and recent visitors news details Japan mission is latest effort to land on the Moon in the following article
Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - TOKYO — Japan is set to make the latest attempt at a soft touch-down on the Moon.
Its Slim (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) mission will aim for a gentle slope, close to an equatorial crater called Shioli.
The bid follows the failure this month of a private American company to reach the lunar surface.
Statistically, it's proven very hard to land on Earth's natural satellite safely. Only about a half of all attempts have succeeded.
Japan's space agency (Jaxa) hopes the precision navigation technologies built into Slim will stack the odds in its favour. Those technologies are behind the mission's nickname of "Moon Sniper".
The lander's onboard computer will be using rapid image processing and crater mapping to try to get to within 100m (330ft) of the targeted touch-down point.
Slim is set to begin the descent maneuvers from an altitude of 15km (9 miles) at midnight into Saturday, Japan Standard Time (Friday 15:00 GMT).
If all goes well, the craft will nestle gently in the lunar "soil" 20 minutes later.
Only the government space agencies of the US, the Soviet Union, China and India have made it to the lunar surface intact. Jaxa has high confidence it will be number five.
There will be a web stream of the descent on the agency's YouTube channel.
Slim is not expected to work for long on the lunar surface, however.
Shioli is currently bathed in sunlight and when darkness returns at the end of the month, the spacecraft's solar panels won't be able to generate electricity and components will probably break in the plummeting temperatures.
But before then, Slim wants to use a scientific camera to study the rocks around the crater.
And with luck the mission's two small rovers will have had success traversing the local terrain.
One is a hopping robot that weighs about 2kg (4.4lb).
The other is a ball that will change its shape when it stops to take photos. One of the companies behind its development is Tomy, who created the Transformers toys.
Jaxa has twice landed on asteroids — an experience that should put Slim in good stead, although the much larger gravity at the Moon will make the feat a lot harder to achieve.
Last year, a private Japanese company, Ispace, had a go at landing. Its Hakuto-R craft crashed when the onboard computer became confused about its altitude above the Moon. It shut down its thruster system early, assuming the surface had been reached when in reality the mission still had another 5km to go.
On Thursday, the private American company Astrobotic disposed of its Peregrine landing craft in Earth's atmosphere. A propulsion fault prevented it from even trying to make a touch-down attempt. — BBC
These were the details of the news Japan mission is latest effort to land on the Moon for this day. We hope that we have succeeded by giving you the full details and information. To follow all our news, you can subscribe to the alerts system or to one of our different systems to provide you with all that is new.
It is also worth noting that the original news has been published and is available at Saudi Gazette and the editorial team at AlKhaleej Today has confirmed it and it has been modified, and it may have been completely transferred or quoted from it and you can read and follow this news from its main source.
