Japan launched a rocket with a lunar lander successfully on Thursday after three unsuccessful attempts earlier this year due to poor weather.
If everything goes according to plan, the “moon sniper” lander will attempt a Moon landing in February.
Amidst setbacks for its space program, Japan has twice failed to reach the lunar surface in the past year.
It is vying to join the US, Russia, China, and India as the fifth country to land on the Moon.
India made history two weeks ago when it successfully landed a spacecraft close to the Moon’s south pole.
The Japanese spacecraft is expected to touch down within 100 meters (328 feet) of a location close to the Shioli crater on the near side of the Moon.
It is expected to enter the Moon’s orbit within four months. Before attempting to land in February, it will spend a next month circling the Moon.
Tokyo hopes to prove it can land a low-cost, lightweight spacecraft on the Moon with this $100 million (£59 million) mission.
The rocket was also carrying the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) satellite, a joint project between the Japanese, American and European space agencies.
Along with the lunar lander, the satellite carrying a bus-sized telescope has separated to begin an orbit around the Earth. It will now start looking into space phenomena like black holes.
The launch was successful after a string of flops over the previous year.
The moon landing mission was abandoned by JAXA last November when it lost contact with its OMOTENASHI spacecraft.
More recently, in April, a private Japanese start-up called iSpace lost contact with the spacecraft and was unable to land its Hakuto-R lander.
This year, two test rocket launches have also failed, the most recent in July when an explosion was brought on by an engine failure.
Source-BBC
