On Thursday, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) confirmed that its SLIM Moon lander endured two lunar nights without its instruments freezing. Launched in September of the previous year, the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon successfully touched down on the Moon on January 19. Remarkably, it achieved a feat that ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 couldn’t accomplish—not once, but twice.
SLIM’s successful landing marked Japan as the fifth country worldwide to achieve a soft-landing on the Moon, following the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and India. However, the journey was far from smooth sailing. Upon touchdown, the 200-kilogram lander landed on its nose, rendering it inoperable due to unfavorable positioning for its solar panels to gather sunlight. Yet, on January 28, it sprung back to life, resuming its mission of gathering scientific data.
Subsequently, JAXA teams placed the lander into hibernation mode in anticipation of its first lunar winter. Despite already accomplishing its primary mission objectives—demonstrating a soft-landing, conducting scientific research, and deploying two small rovers—there were doubts about its survival through the harsh lunar night, where temperatures plummet below minus one hundred degrees Celsius. However, defying expectations, SLIM not only endured one lunar night but two, as reported by JAXA on X, formerly Twitter.
“According to the data obtained, some temperature sensors and unused battery cells are showing signs of malfunction. Nevertheless, the majority of functions that withstood the first lunar night remained intact even after the second,” shared a post from the agency on the platform.
