Japan's SLIM spacecraft, which had been stationed on the moon since late January, has been put back into hibernation until further reactivation later this month, the Japanese space agency Jaxa said on Saturday.
“SLIM was put back to sleep after sunset at 3:00 a.m. on March 1, or 6:00 p.m. GMT on February 29, Jaxa reported on X.
The spacecraft was able to reactivate on February 26 after enduring two weeks of lunar night, although it landed at an angle and its photovoltaic cells were unable to replenish sunlight.
“Although the risk of outage increases due to significant temperature fluctuations, we will attempt to reactivate SLIM when light returns in March,” the agency added on Saturday.
The SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) module successfully landed on the Moon on January 20, 55 m from its original target, the United States, the USSR, China and India.
However, due to an engine problem in the last dozen meters of its descent, SLIM landed at an angle, depriving its west-facing photovoltaic cells of sunlight.
SLIM landed in a small crater called Shioli, less than 300 meters in diameter. The machine was able to land its two mini-rovers normally to conduct analyzes of rocks coming from the Moon's internal structure (the lunar mantle), which is still very poorly understood.
On Thursday, another probe, Odysseus, operated by American company Intuitive Machines, also landed on the moon, a first for a private company.
Likewise, it was also euthanized in the hopes of being able to reactivate it after the lunar night.
Odysseus is the probe that landed furthest south on the Moon, an area of particular interest to the major powers because it contains water in the form of ice.
NASA eventually wants to send its astronauts there as part of its Artemis missions.