Japan’s SLIM moon lander surprisingly survived a second lunar night

Most landers we ship to the moon function for a single lunar day – about two Earth weeks – earlier than being overtaken and killed by the acute chilly of lunar night. But Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) has now survived two nights on the moon and continues to ship pictures again to Earth, an unimaginable feat.

SLIM is Japan’s first lunar lander, making it the fifth nation to land a spacecraft on the moon. When it touched down on 19 January, it was tilted, so the photo voltaic panels didn’t present sufficient energy to maintain it working for greater than a few hours. After 9 days, the solar had moved by means of the sky sufficient to begin it again up once more.

But after simply three Earth days, lunar night started. Nighttime temperatures on the moon drop down as little as -133°C (-208°F), which may damage spacecraft batteries and electronics. Generally, moon landers shut down for lunar night and by no means wake once more, however when the solar rose over SLIM on 25 February, it turned again on.

This in itself was a shock – the lander was not particularly designed to outlive lunar night, and its authentic mission was meant to finish when night fell. So when one other night approached, it appeared this could be the tip for SLIM.

But on 27 March, the official SLIM account posted the image above on X, with the caption: “We received a response from SLIM last night confirming that SLIM was successful in its second overnight. Last night, the sun was still high and the equipment was hot, so we hurriedly used the navigation camera to take pictures of the usual scenery for a short time.” It appears that within the subsequent few Earth days, the lander ought to be capable of restart its evaluation of its environment.

Some spacecraft use radioactive parts to remain heat, however SLIM doesn’t, making its survival significantly astonishing. “It is a major achievement, given that they are not using a radioisotope heater,” says Haym Benaroya at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “The outcome is important and impressive given that this is a major design consideration for electronics (and people) surviving the lunar night.” Analyses of how SLIM survived the place so many different spacecraft have failed might assist us perceive the right way to maintain heat on the moon.