Japan’s SLIM spacecraft landed on the moon – but it’s having problems

Japan’s Sensible Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) has touched down on the lunar floor. The spacecraft will not be working completely, however the profitable touchdown follows a sequence of latest lunar touchdown failures by governments and business spaceflight companies, so it’s nonetheless encouraging for the worldwide effort to discover the moon. This touchdown makes Japan the fifth nation to land on the moon, following the US, the Soviet Union, China and India.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Company (JAXA) launched SLIM in September 2023 and the craft took a protracted, looping path to the moon, circling Earth a number of instances to avoid wasting on gas. Since December, it has been orbiting the moon, taking pictures of the floor and getting ready for touchdown.

The landing on 19 January marks the primary use of a expertise that engineers have nicknamed “good eyes”, which allowed SLIM to focus on its touchdown spot with excessive precision. SLIM in contrast pictures from its on-board cameras to knowledge from different spacecraft orbiting the moon to pinpoint its personal location, after which autonomously navigated to its touchdown spot on the slope of Shioli crater. JAXA officers are nonetheless working to analyse how properly the focusing on protocol labored.

Early indicators from SLIM recommend that its photo voltaic panels don’t appear to be working, so for now the craft is working on battery energy. If the spacecraft operators aren’t in a position to determine what’s incorrect with the photo voltaic cells and get them up and operating, this might hobble SLIM’s scientific capabilities and drastically cut back its lifespan. The battery energy is anticipated to final just a few hours, in response to JAXA officers. It’s attainable that the spacecraft may regain solar energy, however for now JAXA is prioritising returning as a lot knowledge as attainable to Earth earlier than the battery dies.

Because it flew right down to the lunar floor, SLIM additionally dropped off two small rovers, every with their very own small payload of scientific devices. Considered one of them is designed to hop round as an alternative of rolling on wheels, and the opposite is a sphere barely smaller than a tennis ball, designed by a toy producer to roll throughout the lunar floor. The rovers appear to be functioning correctly.

The touchdown spot of the spacecraft is doubtlessly essential. Earlier observations have hinted that there could also be supplies there that had been thrown from the moon’s inside throughout the influence that shaped the crater. SLIM’s scientific devices may research these minerals to study in regards to the formation and evolution of the moon. The success of its touchdown and any scientific knowledge it manages to gather will present helpful knowledge to the various deliberate spacecraft from all around the world heading to the moon within the coming years.