The “Moon Sniper” lunar lander and a ground-breaking satellite that will shed new light on celestial objects are getting ready for flight. On Sunday night, the XRISM mission, which is pronounced “crism,” is anticipated to be launched from Japan by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA.
The satellite, also known as the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, was developed in collaboration with NASA and JAXA, as well as the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency.
SLIM, or the Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon, is a passenger from JAXA. By depending on high-precision landing technologies, this small-scale exploratory lander is intended to show a “pinpoint” landing at a specified place within 100 meters (328 feet), as opposed to the customary kilometer range.
The mission was known as the Moon Sniper because of its accuracy.
After being postponed twice due to severe weather, the agency currently anticipates that XRISM and SLIM will launch at 8:26 p.m. from the Tanegashima Space Center on an H-IIA rocket. Sunday at 9:26 a.m. ET. Monday morning, Japan Standard Time
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Witness the Cosmos
The event will be aired live in both English and Japanese on the JAXA YouTube page. At 7:55 p.m., the live feed will start. Sunday ET. According to NASA, the satellite and its two instruments will study the hottest places, biggest structures, and objects with the strongest gravitational pull in the cosmos.
Astronomers are interested in X-rays because they are emitted by some of the universe’s most powerful objects and events. XRISM will detect X-ray radiation, a wavelength undetectable to humans.
In a statement, Richard Kelley, the XRISM project’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, mentioned some of the things he hopes to investigate with the telescope.
“Some of the things we hope to study with XRISM include the aftermath of stellar explosions and near-light-speed particle jets launched by supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies,” he said. But of course, we’re most eager to see what surprises XRISM will find as it studies our universe.
X-rays are so short in wavelength when compared to other types of light that they can pass through telescopes like the James Webb and Hubble that use dish-shaped mirrors to observe and gather visible, infrared, and ultraviolet light.
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Source: CNN
