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

Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) has touched down on the lunar floor. The spacecraft shouldn’t be working completely, but the profitable touchdown follows a sequence of latest lunar touchdown failures by governments and business spaceflight corporations, 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 Agency (JAXA) launched SLIM in September 2023 and the craft took an extended, looping path to the moon, circling Earth a number of occasions to save lots of on gasoline. Since December, it has been orbiting the moon, taking photographs of the floor and getting ready for touchdown.

The landing on 19 January marks the first use of a know-how that engineers have nicknamed “smart eyes”, which allowed SLIM to focus on its touchdown spot with excessive precision. SLIM in contrast photographs from its on-board cameras to information 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 working, this might hobble SLIM’s scientific capabilities and drastically cut back its lifespan. The battery energy is predicted to final only some hours, in line with JAXA officers. It is feasible that the spacecraft may regain solar energy, but for now JAXA is prioritising returning as a lot information as doable to Earth earlier than the battery dies.

As 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. One of them is designed to hop round as an alternative of rolling on wheels, and the different 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 vital. Previous observations have hinted that there could also be supplies there that have been thrown from the moon’s inside throughout the impression that shaped the crater. SLIM’s scientific devices may research these minerals to study the formation and evolution of the moon. The success of its touchdown and any scientific information it manages to gather will present helpful information to the many deliberate spacecraft from throughout the world heading to the moon in the coming years.