#space rocket

[neutron669]

Dariusz Kieliszek

[printabledesignrf]

Cute space Rockets clip art

[thepastisalreadywritten]

TOKYO, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Japan launched its lunar exploration spacecraft on Thursday aboard a homegrown H-IIA rocket, hoping to become the world's fifth country to land on the moon early next year.

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said the rocket took off from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan as planned and successfully released the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM).

Unfavourable weather led to three postponements in a week last month.

Dubbed the "moon sniper," Japan aims to land SLIM within 100 metres of its target site on the lunar surface.

The $100-million mission is expected to start the landing by February after a long, fuel-efficient approach trajectory.

"The big objective of SLIM is to prove the high-accuracy landing ... to achieve 'landing where we want' on the lunar surface, rather than 'landing where we can'," JAXA President Hiroshi Yamakawa told a news conference.

The launch comes two weeks after India became the fourth nation to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon with its Chandrayaan-3 mission to the unexplored lunar south pole.

Around the same time, Russia's Luna-25 lander crashed while approaching the moon.

Two earlier lunar landing attempts by Japan failed in the last year.

JAXA lost contact with the OMOTENASHI lander and scrubbed an attempted landing in November.

The Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander, made by Japanese startup ispace (9348.T), crashed in April as it attempted to descend to the lunar surface.

SLIM is set to touch down on the near side of the moon close to Mare Nectaris, a lunar sea that, viewed from Earth, appears as a dark spot.

Its primary goal is to test advanced optical and image processing technology.

After landing, the craft aims to analyse the composition of olivine rocks near the sites in search of clues about the origin of the moon. No lunar rover is loaded on SLIM.

Thursday's H-IIA rocket also carried the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) satellite, a joint project of JAXA, NASA and the European Space Agency.

The satellite aims to observe plasma winds flowing through the universe that scientists see as key to helping understand the evolution of stars and galaxies.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (7011.T) manufactured the rocket and operated the launch, which marked the 47th H-IIA rocket Japan has launched since 2001, bringing the vehicle's success rate close to 98%.

JAXA had suspended the launch of H-IIA carrying SLIM for several months while it investigated the failure of its new medium-lift H3 rocket during its debut in March.

Japan's space missions have faced other recent setbacks, with the launch failure of the Epsilon small rocket in October 2022, followed by an engine explosion during a test in July.

The country aims to send an astronaut to the moon's surface in the latter half of the 2020s as part of NASA's Artemis programme.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/japan-launches-rocket-carrying-moon-lander-slim-after-three-delays-2023-09-06/

Japan launches 'Moon Sniper' mission | AFP

7 September 2023

Japan's "Moon Sniper" mission blasted off Thursday as the country's space programme looks to bounce back from a string of recent mishaps, weeks after India's historic lunar triumph.

[cruentaquevivere]

SpaceX’s Starship exploded shortly after launching around 8:30am CDT on 4/20/2023.

SpaceX is allergic to the words “failure” and “explosion”

[rancid-references]

By Theo Bouvier

[jeandejard3n]

First Man: Neil Armstrong

[evelynstarshine]

[rocketshipheroes]

Humanity Just Witnessed Its First Space Battle

[neosciencehub]

Japanese Startup's Space Rocket Launch Fails

Japanese Startup's Space Rocket Launch Fails @neosciencehub #Spacenews #neosciencehub #JapanStartup #Rocketlaunch

A Japanese startup’s space rocket took flight on Wednesday, but the company said the launch had to be cancelled after it was later observed spiralling downhill in the distance. After a first effort in March ended in a mid-air explosion, this was Space One’s second attempt to become Japan’s first private company to launch a satellite into orbit. Companies like Space One want to provide more…

[neutron669]

Apollo 11

[shamysmindfack]

New sticker neon HR 🚀

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin launches massive New Glenn rocket on first test flight

16 January 2025

Blue Origin launched its massive new rocket on its first test flight Thursday, sending up a prototype satellite to orbit thousands of miles above Earth.

[prokopetz]

Tumblr artists on a quest to see how many different things a maid can also be before they stop being recognisable as a maid.

[trainwreckrenegade]

[technological-existentialism]

Some photos I took of the Columbus Module at the National Space Centre