The Japanese space agency suggested Monday that power may have been restored aboard the Slim module, which landed in a lunar crater a few days ago. According to her, he had “resumed operations” and thus his “scientific observations” with the on-board camera.
Published on: 01/29/2024 – 01:54
3 mins
Japan's lunar lander Slim (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) has “resumed operations,” the Japanese Space Agency (Jaxa) announced on Monday, January 29, suggesting that power on board may have been restored. “Last night we managed to establish communication with Slim,” Jaxa wrote on the social network X, formerly Twitter.
“We immediately began scientific observations” with the onboard camera, said the agency, which also released a photo taken by the module showing the rock called “Miniature Poodle” on the lunar soil.
Also readIn pictures: The first photos of the moon landing by the Japanese Slim probe
On January 20, the Slim module achieved a historic lunar landing 55 meters from its original target, with a very high level of precision. This makes Japan the fifth country in the world after the United States to successfully land on Earth's natural satellite. -United States, USSR, China and India.
But shortly afterwards, Jaxa announced that Slim would not be able to use its solar panels and had to cut power less than three hours after the moon landing to conserve batteries for a possible restart.
She said she hoped to turn Slim back on when the sun's angle changed in the area of his moon landing, allowing the sun's rays to reach his photovoltaic panels.
Before shutting down, the machine was able to land its two mini-rovers normally and conduct analyzes of rocks coming from the Moon's internal structure (the lunar mantle), which is still very poorly understood. One of these two rovers is a spherical probe called SORA-Q, barely larger than a tennis ball, that can change shape to move around the lunar surface. It was developed by Jaxa in collaboration with Japanese toy giant Takara Tomy.
Many attempts failed
More than 50 years after the first human steps on the moon – by Americans in 1969 – Earth's natural satellite has once again become the subject of a global race.
The American Artemis program plans to send astronauts back to the moon, a project that was recently postponed to September 2026 and, in the longer term, envisages the construction of a permanent base on site. China has similar competing plans.
Japan's first two attempts to land on the moon failed. In 2022, the Jaxa Omotenashi probe aboard the American Artemis-1 mission suffered a fatal battery failure shortly after it was ejected into space.
And last year, a lander from the young private Japanese company ispace crashed on the lunar surface after missing the crucial step of soft descent.
The path to the moon remains a huge technological challenge for the major space powers: the private American company Astrobotic, commissioned by NASA, also failed to land its first spacecraft on the moon at the beginning of January.
With AFP