(Tokyo) The Japanese Space Agency (Jaxa) said Monday that it cut power to its Slim module less than three hours after Saturday's historic moon landing to conserve batteries for a possible restart.
Posted at 6:47 am
There is a “possibility” that the Japanese slim module, which had a problem with the solar panel, could be revived, Jaxa added.
“According to telemetry data, Slim’s solar panels are facing west. “If sunlight hits the Moon from the west in the future, we believe it is possible to generate energy and we are currently preparing for recovery,” the space agency said.
“We were able to complete the transmission of technical data and images taken during the descent and on the lunar surface before the power went out,” Jaxa said on a social network.
Japan became the fifth country to land on the moon on Saturday.
After a breathtaking 20-minute descent, Jaxa announced that the SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) module had landed at 12:20 a.m. Saturday (Friday, 10:20 a.m. Eastern Time) and that communications with it had been established be.
But due to a lack of solar panels, the machine, nicknamed the “Moon Sniper” because of its ability to land precisely, only had power for “several hours,” warned Hitoshi Kuninaka, one of the Jaxa officials.
It's possible that the panels will work again if the sun's angle changes, she said, as the team worked to maximize the mission's scientific output by transmitting the data obtained to Earth.
SLIM is one of many lunar missions recently launched by countries and private companies. But so far only the USA, the Soviet Union, China and, more recently, India have managed to land on the moon.
“Partnership in the Cosmos”
The head of the American space agency NASA, Bill Nelson, sent his “congratulations (to Japan) for becoming the fifth country in history to successfully land on the moon.” “We value our partnership in the cosmos and our continued collaboration,” he added.
Jaxa hopes to analyze the data collected during the lunar landing to determine whether the spacecraft achieved its goal of landing within 100 meters of its target.
SLIM landed in a small crater called Shioli, less than 300 meters in diameter, and was supposed to conduct analyzes on the ground from there.
The two mini-rovers carried by SLIM were launched normally, Jaxa said, including a spherical probe called SORA-Q, barely larger than a tennis ball and capable of changing shape to move around the lunar soil. It was developed by Jaxa in collaboration with Japanese toy giant Takara Tomy.
Although the accuracy of the moon landing remains to be confirmed, “I consider the mission a great success,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Several problems could potentially be the cause of the solar panel problem, he told AFP. “A loose cable, a misconnected cable, or the lander could be upside down and not see the sun for some reason,” Mr. McDowell suggested.
Technological challenge
More than 50 years after man's first steps on the moon – the Americans in 1969 – it has once again become the subject of a global race.
In addition to the USA and China, Russia also dreams of regaining the space glory of the USSR, particularly through partnerships with China and India, which landed on the moon for the first time last summer.
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 in April 2023, a lunar lander from the young private Japanese company ispace crashed on the lunar surface after missing the gentle descent.