Japan still has hopes of reactivating lunar probe – 01/22/2024 – Science

The Japanese space agency turned off the power supply to its Slim probe, less than three hours after its historic landing, in order to save its batteries, hoping to restore the functions of the lunar module.

According to Jaxa (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), the battery was at 12% when turned off, to avoid a situation in which it would be impossible to restart the systems.

There is a possibility that the Slim lunar landing module (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon), which had a problem with its solar panels, could be reactivated, Jaxa said in a statement released this Monday (22).

“According to telemetry data, Slim’s solar cells are oriented towards the west. If, in the future, sunlight reaches the Moon from the west, we believe it is possible to produce energy and, at the moment, we are preparing for its restoration”, declared the agency.

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

Japan became on Saturday (20) the fifth country to achieve a successful landing on the Moon.

After 20 minutes of descent, Jaxa said its module landed on the surface of the Moon and managed to establish communication.

The solar panels have stopped working, however, meaning his probe, nicknamed the “Moon Sniper” for its precision technology, will only have battery power for “a few hours,” Hitoshi said. Kuninaka, from the Jaxa agency.

Mission managers prioritized collecting data for as long as possible, although Kuninaka suggested the batteries could come back on as soon as 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 set foot on the surface of Earth’s satellite.

“Success”

Jaxa hopes to be able to analyze the data obtained during the landing on the Moon, which will help determine whether the probe fulfilled its objective of placing itself within a radius of 100 meters of the predicted location.

Slim was supposed to land in a crater, where it is believed to be possible to access the Moon’s mantle, the layer below the crust that is normally found at great depth.

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

This small rover, a little bigger than a tennis ball, was developed in conjunction with the company that created Transformer toys.

Although the accuracy of the 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.

Japan’s two previous missions, one public and one private, failed.

In 2022, the island country unsuccessfully sent the Omotenashi lunar probe as part of the American Artemis 1 mission. In April, the “startup” ispace tried to become the first private company to reach the Moon, but lost communication with its spacecraft after a “forced landing”.