The small Japanese space probe SLIM, which landed on the moon last Saturday, touched down about 55 meters from its target, a very high level of precision, the Japanese Space Agency (Jaxa) announced on Thursday.
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The goal of landing this module within a radius of 100 meters from its target, compared to several kilometers in general for lunar missions, was thus achieved.
Jaxa also released on Thursday the first images of this lunar landing, which marked an unprecedented achievement for Japan, which became the fifth country in the world to successfully land on Earth's natural satellite, after the United States, the USSR, China and India.
But the Japanese achievement came with a serious downside: SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) had a problem with its solar panels, forcing Jaxa to turn off its power less than three hours after the moon landing to conserve its batteries for a possible restart later.
Jaxa believes it is possible that SLIM's solar panels will work again if the angle of the sun changes at the lunar landing site.
Landing in a small crater called Shioli, less than 300 meters in diameter, SLIM was able to land its two mini-rovers back to normal to conduct analyzes of rocks from the Moon's internal structure (the lunar mantle), which is very little known.