Japan joins Moon race with successful rocket launch

Japan on Thursday successfully launched a rocket with a lunar lander at its fourth attempt this year.

It is bidding to become only the fifth country to land on the Moon, after the US, Russia, China and India.

Japan has twice failed to reach the lunar surface in the past year, with the latest mission postponed three times in August due to bad weather.

Two weeks ago, India made history when it successfully landed a spacecraft near the south pole of the Moon.

Japan's lunar lander, dubbed the "moon sniper", was launched into space on the H-IIA rocket by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

If all goes well, it will land within 100m (328ft) of a location near the Shioli crater, on the near side of the Moon. Previous landers have touched down between several and dozens of kilometres from their intended landing sites.

The spacecraft is expected to enter the Moon's orbit within four months. It will then spend a month circling the Moon before attempting a landing in February.

The $100m (£59m) mission is meant to demonstrate Tokyo's ability to land a lightweight, low-cost spacecraft on the Moon.

The rocket was also carrying the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) satellite, a joint project between the Japanese, American and European space agencies.

The satellite, containing a telescope the size of a bus, is expected to part ways with the lunar lander. Once in orbit around the Earth, it will begin studying space phenomena such as black holes.

Last November, JAXA lost contact with its OMOTENASHI spacecraft and aborted the Moon landing mission.

More recently in April, a private Japanese start-up, iSpace, failed to land its Hakuto-R lander after it too lost contact with the spacecraft.

Japan's space programme has also been beset by other setbacks.