The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) touched down on Jan. 20 near the Shioli crater
On 28 January, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) re-established contact with the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM), which touched down on the slope of a crater near the Moon’s equator on January 20. “Communication with SLIM was successfully established last night, and operations resumed,” JAXA announced today in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
In an image captured by a robot that SLIM managed to deploy during the probe’s descent — a baseball-sized rover with two cameras — the lander could be seen tipped upside-down. Its solar cells were not able to generate enough power to run its equipment because they were pointing away from the Sun. The lop-sided lander was forced to run on battery power for almost three hours and when the lander’s battery reached 12%, JAXA shut off power to increase the chances of it recharging when the Sun moved into a more favourable position.
Shortly after it woke up, SLIM’s multi-band spectral camera – its only scientific instrument – captured a an image of a rock-strewn field. The rocks were named after dogs, including a nearby one and a distant one, which the SLIM team tagged as shiba inu. The camera will use the moon to take pictures of olivine, a mineral that could aid investigations into the Moon’s origins.
The JAXA took a photo of the rocky moon surface and named it “Toy Poodle”, after seeing it in initial images. The rocks have the names of dog breeds on them and are being analyzed by the probe.
SLIM will continue to take pictures of the Moon until the sun sets at the end of January. The second wind on the landers allows them to see how long it will last before nightfall.
The SLIM landed about 55 meters (60 yards) away from its target, in between two craters near the Shioli crater, a region covered in volcanic rock. Previous moon missions have typically aimed for flat areas at least 10 kilometers (6 miles) wide.
Japan’s first lunar mission hit its target in a precision touchdown on Jan. 20, but landed the wrong way up, leaving its solar panels unable to see the sun.
The data collected from the landing will be analysed by SLIM. JAXA believes the success of the moon landing will be used in future lunar exploration missions.
SLIM’s bumpy landing offers lessons for future missions, such as insights on how to design better propulsion systems, says McDowell. But landing within 100 metres of its target site is an accomplishment all on its own, he adds. “Even if it hadn’t come back to life I would have rated this as a super successful mission,” says McDowell.
One of the probe’s two engines lost thrust when it was 50 metres above the ground, causing the landing to be bumpy. Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at Harvard University in Cambridge says. “It started going sideways because the two engines were unbalanced.”