Pioneering spacecraft reaches moon's orbit, beams back images

After more than three months of whizzing through space, Japan's lunar lander arrived at the moon on Christmas.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency — NASA's Japanese counterpart known as JAXA for short — announced that its moon mission had achieved a major milestone on Dec. 25, successfully inserting into an oval-shaped orbit around the lunar north and south poles. For the next month, its orbit will gradually become more circular before it attempts the actual landing.Whether the spacecraft will succeed in that regard is anyone's guess: About half of all lunar landing attempts have failed, and only one out of three missions that tried to touch down on the moon in 2023 made it without a crash. In August, India became the fourth country to land on the moon, joining the former Soviet Union, United States, and China as the only spacefaring nations to have achieved this feat. Russia and a private Japanese startup company's attempts, both robotic spacecraft, didn't make it.

Getting to the moon, about a quarter-million miles from Earth, isn't even half the battle. But so far, the SLIM mission, short for Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon, has not disappointed with its close-up photoshoot of the moon. As the spacecraft swooped about 370 miles above the surface, it snapped images with its navigation camera, revealing a lunar surface pocked and splattered by craters.

SEE ALSO: Spacecraft sends back unusual view of Earth and the moon Certainly! An unusual view of Earth and the Moon could be from the perspective of a hypothetical observer positioned on the far side of the Moon, which is also known as the "dark side" of the Moon. The Moon is tidally locked to the Earth, meaning the same side always faces our planet. So, the far side of the Moon is never visible from Earth.

From the far side of the Moon, one would have a unique vantage point to observe Earth in the lunar sky. The Earth would appear stationary, as the Moon is tidally locked, and it would not rise or set. The view of Earth from the Moon would showcase the entire globe, with continents, oceans, and clouds visible.

This perspective could offer a breathtaking and unusual view of our home planet against the blackness of space, and it would be a sight that no human has directly witnessed, as no one has been on the far side of the Moon in person. Keep in mind that this description is based on scientific understanding and creative imagination, as actual visuals from this viewpoint do not exist.
Apollo moon-landing deniers have taught us that even pictures sometimes aren't enough to convince folks inclined to believe conspiracy theories. So JAXA stitched together some of the lunar images into a flip book-like video (shown above in this X post) — further evidence of the landmark event.

"You can see that SLIM is indeed moving above the lunar surface," the Japanese space agency said on X, formerly Twitter, according to a Google translation.The SLIM mission launched from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan on Sept. 7 and is expected to touch down near Shioli crater on the moon's near side on Jan. 20. Its goal is to demonstrate a so-called "pinpoint landing" with an accuracy of less than 100 yards, a level of precision unprecedented for moon landings. Most landing targets are many square-miles in scope.
These missions were significant milestones in human space exploration and provided valuable scientific data about the Moon. The astronauts conducted experiments, collected rock and soil samples, and performed various tasks to enhance our understanding of the lunar environment. Keep in mind that information may have developed further since my last update, so it's always a good idea to check for the latest details from reliable sources.