Japan’s first moon lander is aiming for a very small target

BY MARI YAMAGUCHI
Associated Press

TOKYO (AP) — As Japan’s space agency prepares for its first moon landing early Saturday, it’s aiming to hit a very small target. The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, a lightweight spacecraft about the size of a passenger vehicle, is using “pinpoint landing” technology that promises far greater control than any previous moon landing. While most previous probes have used landing zones some 10 kilometers wide, SLIM is aiming at a target of just 100 meters. It’s the fruit of two decades of work on precision technology by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. If successful, it would make Japan the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the moon, after the United States, Russia, China and India.