How Japan’s Moon Landing Mission (SLIM) will Affect India’s Chandrayaan-4

December 28, 2023

GS Paper III Science and Technology

Context: Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) spacecraft, whose success or failure will affect the upcoming Chandrayaan-4 Mission.

Japan’s Moon Landing Mission SLIM will mark the second Japanese attempt this year to soft-land on the moon:
- A Japanese HAKUTO-R M1 lander crashed in late April 2023 after its engines shut down too soon during the landing.

SLIM: Japan’s Moon Landing Mission

SLIM is a small-scale exploration lander designed for pinpoint landings on the Moon’s surface.
It will test the effectiveness of reduction in the size and weight of equipment used in Moon landings, and investigation into the Moon’s origins Weighed 590 kg at launch.
It has been built and launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on September 7, 2023
SLIM was launched together with XRISM, a next-generation X-ray space telescope, onboard an H-2A rocket.

How the Japan’s Moon Landing Mission will impact the Chandrayaan-4:

The findings of the Japan’s Moon Landing Mission “SLIM”, will help guide the trajectory and technology behind the Chandrayaan-4.
If the low-weight mission proves successful, India can adopt these technologies through partnership with JAXA.

Chandrayaan-4:

Objective: The Chandrayaan-4 spacecraft will travel to the moon, land, collect samples, and then connect to another module in space. The module will then return to Earth orbit.
- As the two modules approach Earth, they will separate, with one part returning to Earth and the other will keep orbiting the planet.
Chandrayaan-4 plans to land a much heavier 350 kg rover on the moon.
- In comparison, the Chandrayaan-3 rover weighed only 30kg.
The mission aims to perform a challenging landing on the moon’s rim, an unexplored region.
- The rover will also explore a larger area, measuring 1000m x 1000m, compared to Chandrayaan-3’s 500m x 500m.
LUPEX will be an Indian-Japan joint enterprise (however, while JAXA has approved LUPEX, India is yet to) with the earliest launch date in 2026.
- The Lunar Polar Exploration Mission (LUPEX) is a joint mission of the Indian and Japanese space agencies to explore the moon’s Polar region.
- The technologies JAXA will test with SLIM, like a feature-matching algorithm and navigation systems, will be crucial for this aspect of LUPEX.
- It will explore an area closer to the moon’s south pole than Chandrayaan 3 did