Japan delays its lunar mission ‘Moon Sniper’ for third time due to bad weather

New Delhi: NHK reports that the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has delayed their plan to launch a revolutionary satellite and the Moon Sniper lunar lander for a third time, originally scheduled for Monday. The mission was reportedly called off by the space agency owing to bad weather.

The H2A rocket liftoff from the Tanegashima Space Centre in the Kagoshima prefecture of southwestern Japan was set at 9:26 a.m. The H2-A rocket was loaded with a research satellite co-created by NASA and the European Space Agency and was scheduled to launch from the southern island of Tanegashima.

No new launch date was announced by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

The rocket’s co-developer, MHI Launch Services, announced the cancellation on the Twitter official handle after it was determined that the upper wind did not meet the limits at launch.

Terminal countdown work was underway for the launch of H-ⅡA Launch Vehicle No.47.However,Today’s launch is canceled because it was confirmed that the upper wind dose not satisfy the constraints at launch. #H2AF47

— MHI Launch Services (@MHI_LS) August 28, 2023

As part of a project that is being conducted in collaboration with JAXA and NASA, the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission satellite, which will be included in the Japanese space agency JAXA’s XRISM mission, is expected to uncover previously unknown celestial bodies.

According to NASA, the satellite and its two sensors will study the most massive structures and gravitationally powerful objects in the cosmos. Invisible to the bare eye, X-ray light is the target of the XRISM mission.

Even Japan has tried previously, with last year’s failed effort to land the Omotenashi lunar probe on NASA’s Artemis 1 due to a communications failure.

This time the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to land its Moon Sniper spacecraft within 100 metres (330 feet) of their intended target on the Moon.