Moon lander Slim revives and continues mission in Japan

After being shut down for a week owing to a power supply issue, Japan's lunar lander has started operations again.

On Sunday night, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said that it had re-established contact with the lander, suggesting that the problem had been resolved.

The agency announced that it had successfully captured sunlight again, indicating that its solar cells are functioning properly.

Because its solar cells were facing the wrong direction when it touched down on January 20th, it was unable to produce any electricity.

Japanese astronauts made history with the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (Slim) mission, joining the United States, the former Soviet Union, China, and India as the only five nations to soft-land on the moon.

After the spacecraft operated for a few hours on battery power, the authorities decided to switch off the power in order to give the possibility of electricity recovery when the sun's angle changed.

X (formerly Twitter) was where Jaxa posted a photo of a rock it had dubbed a "toy poodle" that Slim had shot nearby.

According to Jaxa, the lander will examine rock compositions for information regarding the moon's birth.

Within 55 meters (180 feet) of its destination in a crater, Slim touched down at the edge of an equatorial crater called Shioli. An "unprecedented pinpoint landing" was how Jaxa put it.

As a possible source of fuel, water, and oxygen, the lunar poles are mountainous, and future exploration may be possible thanks to the landing technique, according to the agency.

After multiple failed Japanese attempts—including one by startup iSpace, whose lunar lander crashed due to internal computer confusion about its altitude above the Moon—the Slim mission was finally launched.

When Slim will do the lunar operation is something Jaxa could not predict with any certainty. Previous statements indicated that the lander was not built to withstand a lunar night. A lunar night, during which the moon's surface is shielded from sunlight, is approximately fourteen days long.

The statistical odds of successfully landing on the Moon are extremely low. About 50% of the time, it doesn't work.

India was the most recent country to enter the exclusive club of nations that have accomplished this, preceding Japan. In August 2023, the Chandrayaan-3 rover landed on the Moon close to the south pole, a previously unexplored region.

A private US spacecraft's lunar mission terminated earlier this month when it went up in flames over the Pacific. The first Russian lunar probe in decades lost control and crashed into the Moon in August of last year.

Moon lander Slim revives and continues mission in Japan

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