2024-01-29 00:54:02
The Japanese space agency announced Monday that communications with the Slim module, which landed on January 20, had been restored. According to her, he “resumed his operations” and began his “scientific observations” with the on-board camera.
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The Japanese lunar module Slim (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) has “resumed operations”, the Japanese space agency (Jaxa) announced on Monday January 29, suggesting that power had been restored on board. “Last night we managed to establish communication with Slim,” wrote Jaxa on the social network X, formerly Twitter.
Communication with SLIM was successfully established last night, and operations resumed! Science observations were immediately started with the MBC, and we obtained first light for the 10-band observation. This figure shows the “toy poodle” observed in the multi-band observation. pic.twitter.com/WYD4NlYDaG
— Small lunar landing demonstration vehicle SLIM (@SLIM_JAXA) January 29, 2024
“We immediately began scientific observations” with the onboard camera, said the agency, which also posted a photograph taken by the module showing the rock called “Toy Poodle” on the lunar soil.
Read alsoIn pictures: the first photos of the moon landing of the Japanese Slim probe
On January 20, the Slim module made a historic moon landing 55 meters from its initial target, a very high degree of precision, making Japan the fifth country in the world to successfully land on the Earth’s natural satellite following the United States. -United States, USSR, China and India.
But due to an engine problem in the last tens of meters of its descent, Slim had landed at an angle and its west-facing photovoltaic cells were not receiving sunlight.
The Moon describes its orbit in 27 Earth days, and daylight lasts regarding half of this duration, this spokesperson recalled. Also, daylight where the module is located “will last approximately until the end of January.”
Slim landed in a small crater less than 300 meters in diameter called Shioli. Before shutting down, the machine was able to land its two minirovers normally, supposed to carry out analyzes of rocks coming from the internal structure of the Moon (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, capable of modifying its shape to move on the lunar surface. It was developed by Jaxa, in partnership with the Japanese toy giant Takara Tomy.
World Race
More than 50 years following the first human steps on the Moon – taken by the Americans in 1969 – the Earth’s natural satellite has once once more become the subject of a global race.
The American Artemis program plans to send astronauts back to the Moon, a project recently postponed to September 2026, with in the longer term the construction of a permanent base on site. China has similar competing plans.
Japan’s first two moon landing attempts went wrong. In 2022, a Jaxa probe, Omotenashi, on board the American Artemis 1 mission, experienced a fatal battery failure shortly following its ejection into space. And last year, a lander from the young private Japanese company ispace crashed on the surface of the Moon, having missed the crucial step of gentle descent.
Reaching the Moon remains an immense technological challenge, even for the major space powers: the private American company Astrobotic, under contract with NASA, also failed at the beginning of January to land its first spacecraft on the Moon.
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