Japan’s Slim Module Survives the Cold Lunar Night – 02/26/2024 – Science
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The Japanese space agency, Jaxa, announced this Monday (26) that the Slim module survived the two weeks of lunar night and reestablished communication with Earth. The resumption comes more than a month after the spacecraft made a historic landing on the Moon.
“Yesterday [domingo] At night we sent an order, to which Slim responded”, said Jaxa on the social network X. “Sslim managed to survive the lunar night and maintained his ability to communicate!”, he added.
Communications “were interrupted shortly afterwards because it was still lunar noon and the temperature of the communications equipment was very high,” the space agency said. “We are making preparations to resume operations as soon as instrument temperatures cool sufficiently.”
Slim (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) landed on the lunar surface on the 19th of last month, making Japan the fifth country to land in history. The module is 2.7 meters long and weighs 200 kilos.
Odysseus, from the company Intuitive Machines, from Houston (Texas), also achieved the feat last Thursday (22), amid a new race of nations and companies in search of natural resources and establishing a sustainable and lasting stay .
Shortly after landing 55 m from its target, south of the lunar equator, Slim lost power because it had tipped over and its solar panels were at the wrong angle.
The solar panels regained electricity more than a week later, thanks to the change in the direction of sunlight. With this, it was possible to make scientific observations of a crater with a multiband spectroscopic camera installed in the module.
Jaxa then announced that the probe would “sleep” because of the harsh lunar nights, for which it was not designed, and that it would try to operate it again after this period.
Despite problems, the module achieved its objective of landing one hundred meters from its target, a much greater precision than other landings, which according to experts generally have a margin of several kilometers.
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