Japan's SLIM lunar lander has been resurrected in the last day, more than a week after it ran out of power due to its troubled landing on the moon, which left the probe upside down with solar panels pointing in the wrong direction.
The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced yesterday (Monday) that communication with SLIM has been restored and that its mission to the moon will continue as planned.
According to the agency, the renewed communication was made possible due to a change in the direction of the sunlight, which damaged the probe's solar panels and charged its battery.
Japan became the fifth country to land on the moon.
Archive // Photo: Reuters
A few days ago, pictures of the lunar surface were published taken by the SLIM multiband spectral camera, which managed to take them before its power ran out.
Today, JAXA released another image of the "toy poodle" rock taken by SLIM.
As you may remember, the purpose of the Japanese spacecraft was to test technology for making precise landings on the surface of bodies of different gravity, with an unprecedented accuracy of less than 100 meters from the target, this is in contrast to previous moon landings that landed with a deviation of up to tens of kilometers.
The SLIM probe was photographed upside down by another robot on the moon, photo: AFP
According to the agency, the lander can autonomously determine the best place to land by photographing craters and surfaces during landing and comparing them to images pre-entered into its database, with the spacecraft designed to land on one of its five legs first and use the others to stabilize.
With the successful landing of SLIM, Japan entered the prestigious club of the powers that have so far succeeded in landing various spacecraft on the moon, including the USA, the Soviet Union, China and India.
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
— 小小月着陸実証機SLIM (@SLIM_JAXA) January 29, 2024
Far from every journey to the moon ends successfully
Despite Japan's success in landing on the moon, it is the United States that is currently unable to return to the moon. As I recall, the private spacecraft Peregrine 1, which took off into space at the beginning of the month with the aim of being the first commercial vehicle to reach the moon, was unable to fulfill its mission and had to "turn around" and return to the sphere Haaretz.
Peregrine 1 left Cape Canaveral in Florida as planned, but about seven hours into the journey, the spacecraft encountered a series of technical problems. According to the crews responsible, "the spacecraft experienced a critical loss of propellant."
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