Japan Moon lander ‘appears to have landed’: space agency

TOKYO: Japan´s precision Moon lander “appeared” to have landed on the lunar surface early on Saturday, but confirmation was still awaited, space agency JAXA said.

If its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) mission succeeds, Japan will be the fifth nation to pull off a fiendishly tricky “soft landing” after the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India.

Japan´s mission is one of a string of new projects launched in recent years on the back of renewed interest in Earth´s natural satellite.

The Japanese craft -- equipped with a shape-shifting mini-rover co-developed by the firm behind Transformer toys -- has been designed to pull off the feat with unprecedented precision.

The lander began its “powered descent sequence” at around midnight (1500 GMT) Japanese time and after scanning the surface and hovering, appeared to have landed, JAXA´s live visualisation showed.

“From the screen it appears the SLIM has landed on the moon. We are checking the status,” JAXA official Shin Toriumi said before the live broadcast cut, pending a later news conference.

If all went to plan, it will have landed within a target area just 100 metres (yards) across, far tighter than the usual landing zone of several kilometres.

Success would restore high-tech Japan´s reputation in space after two failed lunar missions and recent rocket failures, including explosions after take-off.