Japan’s moon explorer, the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM), managed to restore power on Monday, triumphing over a setback that arose more than a week following the probe’s touchdown. The problem emerged when the lander’s solar panels were incorrectly oriented upon landing, resulting in a depletion of electricity.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced that it successfully re-established communication with its moon lander on Sunday night as the spacecraft resumed its mission, capturing images of the Moon’s surface and transmitting them back to Earth.
According to an AP news report, on January 20, SLIM successfully touched down on the moon within 55 meters (180 feet) of its intended target, nestled within a crater near the lunar equator. However, just before its landing, the spacecraft encountered a last-minute engine failure, resulting in a landing a few meters off-target and ending up face-down on the lunar surface. With its left solar panel oriented away from the sunlight, it was unable to generate power. Consequently, the craft was powered down, awaiting the sun’s ascent in the lunar sky later in January.
In a press release, JAXA announced that in the event of this contingency, the Lunar Excursion Vehicles (LEV-1 and LEV-2) were effectively detached just before landing. Additionally, the multi-band spectroscopic camera (MBC) onboard SLIM was activated on a trial basis and managed to capture images until power was cut off.
Now restored with power, the craft has resumed its mission of analyzing the composition of olivine rocks on the lunar surface using its multi-band spectral camera, as per JAXA.
The space agency shared a black-and-white image on social media, showcasing a lunar rock nicknamed “toy poodle.”
The mission team has selected individual rocks near the landing site and assigned them names of dog breeds, seemingly as a way to denote the size of each rock.
Speaking to BBC News, Dr. Simeon Barber, a lunar scientist from the Open University, explained, “The camera responds differently — in different wavelengths — to each of the minerals that are in this rock.” This capability will provide scientists with valuable clues about the origin and evolution of the Moon.
Dr. Barber further elaborated, “If toy poodle is completely different to the rocks around it, that might suggest it was transported there by an impact event. All this detail allows us to piece together more about what’s happened on the Moon since it was formed.”
According to an AP news report, SLIM is projected to have sufficient sunlight to continue its operations for several Earth days, potentially until Thursday.
This achievement has propelled Japan to become the fifth country in the world to successfully land on the moon’s surface, following the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and India.
