Japan releases first photo on the Moon after precise landing – 01/25/2024 – Science

Japan’s lunar probe achieved a precise landing, about 100 meters from its target, the country’s space agency said on Thursday (25). On the 19th, the country became the fifth to place a spacecraft on the Moon.

Japan hopes the demonstration of what it called a precision lunar landing will revitalize its space program. As it seeks to overcome setbacks, the country wants to play a greater role in space, partnering with its ally the United States to confront China.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) said it received all data about the landing of the Smart Lander for Lunar Research (Slim) 2:37 am before the probe lost power.

“We proved that you can land where you want, rather than where you are able to,” the probe’s project manager, Shinichiro Sakai, said at a press conference. “This will inspire more and more people, hopefully Japanese missions, to try to land in unexplored places on the Moon.”

One of the probe’s two main engines likely stopped in the final phase of the landing, causing it to stray 55 meters from the target location into an unintended position, Sakai said. If there had been no engine problems, it could have landed just 3 to 4 meters from the target, he said.

The probe was dropped into the gentle slope of a crater on the moon’s surface, in a photo published by Jaxa and taken by a Slim wheeled rover deployed during landing. Tilted westward due to the fall, Slim’s solar panels were unable to generate electricity, but a change in the direction of sunlight could energize them before the next lunar sunset on February 1, when the temperature will drop below freezing.

“Slim was not designed to survive a lunar night,” Sakai said. The power outage meant the probe’s multiband spectral camera, tasked with studying the composition of lunar rocks, could only generate low-resolution images, Jaxa said.

‘MOON SNIPER’

The landing with an error of less than 100 meters by Slim, nicknamed the “moon sniper”, surpasses the conventional accuracy of several kilometers for lunar landers. It used “vision-based” navigation that Jaxa says could be a powerful tool for future exploration of the moon’s mountainous poles, seen as a possible source of fuel and vital water and oxygen.

With several private space startups, Japan intends to send an astronaut to the Moon in NASA’s Artemis program in the coming years. But Jaxa’s recent setbacks in rocket development have included the March launch failure of its new H3 rocket. This has delayed many of Japan’s space missions, including Slim and Lupex, a joint lunar exploration project with India, which made a historic landing on the moon’s south pole in August.

Over the past year, three lunar missions from Japanese startups, the Russian space agency and US company Astrobotic have failed, but more lunar landers will head to the moon this year. American startup Intuitive Machines plans to launch its IM-1 lander in mid-February. China plans to send its Chang’e-6 spacecraft to the far side of the moon in the first half of the year, and NASA’s Viper lunar polar exploration rover is scheduled to launch in November.