TOKYO—Japan’s space agency said Thursday that its first lunar mission hit the tiny patch of the moon’s surface it was aiming for, in a successful demonstration of its system—although the probe appears to be lying upside-down.
Japan became the fifth country in history to reach the moon when the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, touched down on the Moon early on Saturday. But trouble with the probe’s solar batteries made it hard at first to figure out whether the probe landed in the target zone.
While most previous probes have used landing zones about 10 kilometers (six miles) wide, SLIM was aiming at a target of just 100 meters (330 feet). Improved accuracy would give scientists access to more of the moon, since probes could be placed nearer to obstacles....
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