Japan hopes to reactivate its Moon probe

The Japanese space agency turned off the power to its SLIM probe, less than three hours after its historic hallucination, with the aim of saving its batteries and hoping to restore its functions.

There is a “possibility” that the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) landing module, which had a problem with its solar panels, can be reactivated, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said in a statement this Monday.

“According to telemetry data, SLIM’s solar cells are facing west. If in the future sunlight hits the Moon from the west, we believe it is possible to produce energy, and we are currently preparing for its restoration,” the agency stated.

“We were able to complete the transmission of technical data and images acquired during the descent and on the lunar surface before the power was lost,” JAXA said on social network X, adding that a “large volume of data” had been received.

Japan On Saturday, it became the fifth country to achieve a successful moon landing.

After 20 minutes of descent, JAXA said its module landed on the Moon’s surface and had been able to establish communication.

But the solar panels stopped working so the probe, nicknamed “Moon Sniper” for its precision technology, will only have a battery for “a few hours,” said Hitoshi Kuninaka of the JAXA agency.

Mission officials prioritized collecting data while possible, although Kuninaka suggested it was possible for the batteries to work again once the angle of sunlight changes.

SLIM is one of many new lunar missions that countries and private companies have launched 50 years after Neil Armstrong put your foot on the surface of the Earth’s satellite.

“Success”

JAXA hopes to be able to analyze the data obtained during the moon landing, which will help determine whether the probe met its objective of placing itself within a 100-meter radius of the planned location.

SLIM was to land in a crater where it is believed that the mantle of the planet can be accessed. Moonthe layer below the crust that is usually found at great depth.

The two probes were successfully deployed, JAXA said. One is equipped with a transmitter and another is designed to roll across the lunar surface and send the images back to Earth.

This small rover, slightly larger than a tennis ball, has been developed jointly with the firm that created Transformer toys.

Although the accuracy of the moon landing needs to be verified, “I think the mission is a great success,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The two previous missions of Japanone public and one private, had failed.

In 2022, the island country unsuccessfully sent the Omotenashi lunar probe as part of the US Artemis 1 mission.

In April, startup ispace attempted to become the first private firm to reach the Moon, but lost communication with its spacecraft after a “hard landing.”