SLIM SATELITE..

Following India's historic lunar landing, Japan's space programme hopes to rebound from a series of mishaps with the launch of its own mission, "Moon Sniper," next week. The rocket will transport a lander to the Moon's surface in four to six months, as well as an X-ray imaging satellite to study the universe's evolution. The launch has been pushed back to Monday due to adverse weather, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

Japan has one of the world's greatest space programmes, but its first effort to place a lander on the Moon in November 2022 failed, and a new type of rocket burst during a test last month. The "Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon" is now the focus of JAXA's hopes. SLIM is compact and light, standing 2.4 metres (7.9 feet) tall, 2.7 metres wide, and 1.7 metres long, and weighing approximately 700 kilogrammes (1,545 pounds).

For its precision, JAXA is seeking to land the "Moon Sniper" within 100 metres of a specified target on the Moon, significantly less than the customary range of several miles. The probe, built in collaboration with a toy business, attempts to investigate how the Moon was formed by investigating exposed bits of the lunar mantle using a palm-sized tiny rover that can change shape."Lunar landing remains a very difficult technology," SLIM project team member Shinichiro Sakai told reporters on Thursday, offering tribute to India's success.

India landed a probe near the Moon's south pole on Wednesday, a historic victory for the world's most populous country and its low-cost space mission.

Previously, only the United States, Russia, and China had managed to land a spacecraft on the moon's surface, with no spacecraft landing on the south pole. India's accomplishment comes just days after a Russian probe crashed in the same area, and four years after the previous Indian attempt failed at the final minute.

Japan has previously attempted to land a lunar probe named Omotenashi, carried by NASA's Artemis 1, but the mission failed and contacts were lost. The H2-A rocket, which will launch from Tanegashima in southern Japan on Monday, will also carry the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), which was built by JAXA, NASA, and the European Space Agency. The satellite's high-resolution X-ray spectroscopic measurements of the universe's hot gas plasma wind will aid in the study of mass and energy movements, as well as the composition and evolution of celestial objects. "There is a theory that dark matter is preventing galaxies from expanding," XRISM project manager Hironori Maejima remarked.