If all goes to plan, the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (Slim) will begin its descent to the rocky lunar surface at midnight on Friday (1500 GMT) before touching down about 20 minutes later, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa).
Success would mark a transition from an era of landing where we can towards one of landing where we want for future missions, Jaxa has said. It would also add Japan to a short list of countries to have performed the feat the US, the Soviet Union, China and India and ease the disappointment of recent setbacks to its space programme.
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