Japan’s moon lander woke up after unexpectedly surviving a second frigid, two-week lunar night and transmitted new images back to Earth, the country’s space agency said yesterday.
The uncrewed Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) probe touched down in January, making Japan only the fifth nation to reach the lunar surface without crashing.
However, the lightweight spacecraft landed at a wonky angle that left its solar panels facing the wrong way.
Photo: AFP / JAXA / Takara Tomy / Sony Group Corp / Doshisha University
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced the probe’s latest surprise awakening in a post on X.
“We received a response from SLIM last night and confirmed that SLIM had successfully completed its second overnight,” it said.
A black-and-white photograph of the rocky surface of a crater accompanied the post on SLIM’s official account.
“Since the sun was still high in the sky ... and the equipment was still hot, we recorded images of the usual scenery with the navigational camera, among other activities, for a short period of time,” it said.
Yesterday’s news came after an uncrewed US lander called Odysseus — the first private spaceship to successfully land on the moon — had failed to wake up.
Its manufacturer, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, had hoped the lander might revive like Japan’s SLIM, but on Saturday said that its lander’s mission was over.
The Intuitive Machines spaceship also landed at the wrong angle, but completed several tests and send back photos before the most recent lunar night began.
JAXA has dubbed SLIM the “Moon Sniper” for its precision landing technology.
The aim of its mission was to examine a part of the moon’s mantle — the usually deep inner layer beneath its crust — believed to be accessible at the crater where it landed.
About three hours after its nail-biting touchdown on Jan. 20, JAXA switched the lander off remotely to save power, having received technical and image data from its descent.
As the sun’s angle shifted, the probe came back to life in late January for two days and carried out scientific observations of a crater with a high-spec camera.
JAXA said that the spacecraft was “not designed for the harsh lunar nights,” when the temperature plunges below minus-130°C.
So scientists had cause for celebration when SLIM successfully woke up late last month against the odds.
The SLIM saga has been a boon for the space agency after a string of high-profile failures, including two previous Japanese lunar missions — one public and one private.
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