Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said the rocket took off from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan as planned. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries manufactured the rocket and operated the launch.
The rocket is carrying JAXA's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) spacecraft, dubbed the "moon sniper" for its experimental precision landing technology. SLIM's lunar landing is scheduled for early next year.
The launch comes two weeks after India became the fourth nation to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon with its Chandrayaan-3 mission to the lunar south pole.
Two earlier attempts by Japan to land on the moon failed in the past year. JAXA lost contact with a lander carried by a NASA rocket and scrubbed an attempted landing in November. A lander made by Japanese startup ispace crashed in April as it attempted to descend to the lunar surface.
(Reporting by Kantaro Komiya; Editing by Tom Hogue and Gerry Doyle)
By Kantaro Komiya
