Japan attempts historic moon landing

Will Japan be the fifth country in the world to successfully land on the Moon? While India has joined this very exclusive club this year (United States, Russia, China and therefore India since August), the Japanese space agency, Jaxa, will attempt to land on Friday January 19 afternoon (French time). ) its lander, called Slim, on the surface of our natural satellite. In particular by using new approach techniques.

In the acronym Slim, the letters S and L stand for “Smart Lander”. And this is indeed the technological objective of this mission which left Japan last September: to succeed, without human assistance, in placing a machine as precisely as possible on the Moon, with a margin of error of a few tens of meters. , when today these arrivals are sometimes kilometers from the targeted point.

Demonstrate technological know-how

“They are going to use something very new: the facial recognition systemexplains Marie-Ange Sanguy, editor-in-chief of the magazine Espace et exploration. By filming in real time, they will compare with the data they have in the computer and say: ‘I am in this place, I need to modify a little, I am in this other place, I modify a little bit. ‘. And this while analyzing what exactly they see underneath. They will mix data and go even further in recognizing the ground on which they will land.”

The challenge for the Japanese agency is to demonstrate its know-how and its technological potential, which is a partner of the European and American agencies in the Artemis program, whose ambition is the return of Man to the Moon in the duration, by the end of the decade. The landing is scheduled for Friday at 4:20 p.m. (Paris time) and can be followed live.