Japan launched a “moon sniper” lunar exploration spacecraft on Thursday( 7 Septembet 2023) 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.
• 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.