Japan launches rocket carrying X-ray telescope to explore origins of universe, lunar lander

Article content material

TOKYO (AP) — Japan launched a rocket Thursday carrying an X-ray telescope that can discover the origins of the universe in addition to a small lunar lander.

The launch of the HII-A rocket from Tanegashima House Middle in southwestern Japan was proven on dwell video by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Company, referred to as JAXA.

Article content material

“We’ve got a liftoff,” the narrator at JAXA mentioned because the rocket flew up in a burst of smoke and flew over the Pacific.

Article content material

The rocket will put into orbit round Earth a satellite tv for pc known as the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, or XRISM, which can measure the pace and make-up of what lies between galaxies.

That data helps in finding out how celestial objects had been fashioned, and hopefully can result in fixing the thriller of how the universe was created, JAXA says.

In cooperation with NASA, JAXA will take a look at the energy of sunshine at completely different wavelengths, the temperature of issues in house and their shapes and brightness.

David Alexander, director of the Rice House Institute at Rice College, believes the mission is important for delivering perception into the properties of scorching plasma, or the superheated matter that makes up a lot of the universe.

Plasmas have the potential for use in numerous methods, together with therapeutic wounds, making pc chips and cleansing the atmosphere.

“Understanding the distribution of this scorching plasma in house and time, in addition to its dynamical movement, will make clear numerous phenomena comparable to black holes, the evolution of chemical components within the universe and the formation of galactic clusters,” Alexander mentioned.

Article content material

Article content material

Additionally aboard the newest Japanese rocket is the Good Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, a light-weight lunar lander. The Good Lander received’t make lunar orbit for 3 or 4 months after the launch and would doubtless try a touchdown early subsequent yr, in keeping with the house company.

JAXA is growing “pinpoint touchdown know-how” to organize for future lunar probes and touchdown on different planets. Whereas landings now are typically off by about 10 kilometers (6 miles) or extra, the Good Lander is designed to be extra exact, inside about 100 meters (330 toes) of the meant goal, JAXA official Shinichiro Sakai instructed reporters forward of the launch.

That enables the box-shaped gadgetry to discover a safer place to land.

The transfer comes at a time when the world is once more turning to the problem of going to the moon. Solely 4 nations have efficiently landed on the moon, the U.S., Russia, China and India.

Final month, India landed a spacecraft close to the moon’s south pole. That got here simply days after Russia failed in its try to return to the moon for the primary time in almost a half century. A Japanese non-public firm, known as ispace, crashed a lander in attempting to land on the moon in April.

Article content material

Japan’s house program has been marred by current failures. In February, the H3 rocket launch was aborted for a glitch. Liftoff a month later succeeded, however the rocket needed to be destroyed after its second stage did not ignite correctly.

Japan has began recruiting astronaut candidates for the primary time in 13 years, making clear its ambitions to ship a Japanese to the moon.

Going to the moon has fascinated humankind for many years. Beneath the U.S. Apollo program, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon in 1969.

The final NASA human mission to the moon was in 1972, and the deal with sending people to the moon appeared to wane, with missions being relegated to robots.

___

Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

Article content material