Japan’s Moon Lander Sends Final Photos Before Slipping Into Lunar Night

Japan’s SLIM lunar lander has faced challenges since landing on the Moon’s surface. Despite making a record-breaking landing, it encountered a bump that put its mission at risk. However, it managed to recover and regain energy from the Sun’s rays. Now, its biggest test is surviving the freezing lunar night. The mission may or may not come to an end, but before entering power-down mode, it captured some impressive final images of the Moon’s surface to transmit back to Earth.On January 19, Japan confirmed that its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) had successfully soft-landed on the Moon, making Japan the fifth nation to achieve this feat. However, the ground team immediately noticed an issue. While the lander had landed precisely inside the Shioli Crater and deployed its two rovers as planned, its solar panels were not receiving sunlight, forcing it to rely solely on its batteries.A photo taken by one of the rovers showed that the lander had landed on its nose, preventing the solar panels from collecting sunlight. The team hoped that as the Moon orbited the Earth, the change in angle would allow sunlight to reach the lander’s solar cells and recharge its batteries. After nearly 10 days, it successfully reestablished contact and transmitted new photos.Since then, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has been surveying the lunar surface and capturing images using SLIM’s Multi-Band Camera (MBC) to study the rocky composition, exceeding its original targets. However, JAXA confirmed that SLIM has entered a dormant state as it faces the two-week lunar night, during which its solar panels will not receive any sunlight, plunging temperatures to around -130°C (-208°F).              ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.Now, JAXA must wait out the lunar night, enduring temperatures that can plummet to -130°C (-208°F). If SLIM survives, conditions should improve by February 15, and JAXA will attempt to reestablish contact. If successful, it can resume its scientific missions, exploring the area around Shioli crater, located within the larger Cyrillus crater on the near side of the Moon. On the other hand, if SLIM does not survive, it has already achieved a historic milestone with the most accurate landing on another world. SLIM was designed to land within 100 meters (330 feet) of its target area, a remarkable achievement considering Perseverance’s landing target area on Mars was much larger. In fact, JAXA confirmed that SLIM landed within just 55 meters (180 feet) of its target, surpassing all expectations. The lunar night poses a significant challenge for landers, as many are not equipped to withstand it. If SLIM reactivates after two weeks, its mission will have been fulfilled, but it will continue to examine and analyze the chemical composition of lunar rocks, contributing to our understanding of the Moon’s origins.

Author: OpenAI