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Japan aims to land unmanned explorer on Moon in 2018

Posted April. 20, 2015 07:14,   

한국어

Japan is seeking to land an unmanned spacecraft to the moon. If successful, Japan will be the fourth country to do so after the former Soviet Union, the U.S. and China.

According to the Sankei Shimbun on Sunday, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency confirmed a plan to launch the "SLIM," an unmanned Moon explorer, in 2018. The agency will debrief the SLIM project at a subcommittee meeting of Japan`s Space Policy Committee, and an expert meeting of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology on Monday. The Japanese government will make a final decision on the project by this summer.

Japan estimates the project will cost 10 billion yen (84 million U.S. dollars) to 15 billion yen (126 million dollars). The ministry has decided to reflect the cost in next year’s budget. The country plans to launch the explorer in Kagoshima, Japan through the small-size carrier rocket (Epsilon 5), which it developed on its own.

Moon explorers that were launched by the U.S. and other countries have had a margin of deviation amounting to 1 kilometer to several kilometers between the target spot and actual landing sites. However, Japan’s explorer aims to reduce the margin to 100 meters by applying state-of-the-art facial identification technology used in digital cameras and other techniques.

Japan landed for about 30 minutes its expedition spaceship "Hayabusa" on the surface of the asteroid "Itokawa." Itokawa is a small plant with virtually no gravity, but the moon is a celestial body with relatively big gravity. Japan has never landed an explorer on a large celestial body.

In 2007, Japan also succeeded in closely surveying the surface of the moon in the sky by its satellite "Kaguya" that orbits the Moon. In October that year, the Space Development Committee under the Japanese government officially announced that it will aim to conduct exploration of the moon’s surface by the mid-2010s.

“Moon exploration is important because it provides a stepping stone for exploration of Mars,” said the Sankei Shimbun. “The ultimate goal of the SLIM’s launch is to demonstrate Japan’s presence in manned exploration of Mars, a project that the U.S. is pushing to achieve by the 2030s.”



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