2024-04-24 07:51:46
Much more enduring than expected, the Japanese probe SLIM, which landed on the moon in late January, survived its third lunar night lasting regarding two weeks on Earth, the Japanese space agency Jaxa announced Wednesday.
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The space agency once once more managed to establish contact with the probe and posted on X a new image of the lunar surface taken by the craft.
“SLIM has retained its main functions,” welcomed Jaxa, who had initially warned that this small module was not designed to withstand the very cold temperatures (up to -130° Celsius) of lunar nights.
“We will continue to closely monitor the condition of SLIM and check which of the parts are likely to deteriorate the most” depending on the day and night on the Moon, Jaxa added.
With SLIM, which landed with a high degree of precision on the Moon, Japan became the fifth country in the world to successfully land a lunar lander, following the USA, USSR, China and India.
This probe is intended to analyze rocks on the surface of the moon that come from its “mantle”, its internal structure, which is still poorly understood.
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