Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon or SLIM spacecraft regained power after more than a week without electricity following its moon landing.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said it re-established contact with the lander on January 28. SLIM had landed on the slope of a crater near the Moon’s equator on January 20.
“Communication with SLIM was successfully established last night, and operations resumed,” JAXA announced in a post on X on Monday.
JAXA said it re-established communication with its lander nine days after Japan achieved the milestone of becoming the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the moon.
SLIM’s landing
The SLIM successfully landed on the moon on January 20, coming within 55 meters (180 feet) of its target. However, a probable failure with one of the probe’s two main thrusters resulted in it landing upside down instead of on its feet.
Mission managers had to place the lander into hibernation within three hours of landing due to the rapid drainage of battery power.
The subsequent recharging of the lander was likely facilitated by a shift in sunlight direction, illuminating the lander’s solar cells and enabling power generation, Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts explained.
“The systems are robust enough that they could power down and then wake up again once they got some sunlight,” McDowell said.
Resumption of operations
JAXA said the lander has resumed its operations to analyze the composition of olivine rocks on the lunar surface, in search of clues about the origin of the moon.
The agency said it does not have a clear date when SLIM will end its operation, but previously said the lander was not designed to survive a lunar night – the next is on Thursday.
JAXA said SLIM has resumed operations to analyze the composition of olivine rocks on the lunar surface, aiming to uncover clues about the moon’s origin. The agency did not provide a specific end date for the lander’s operations, however, it previously said that the lander was not designed to endure a lunar night, with the next one expected on Thursday.
The mission has already been hailed a success, having achieved the primary objective of landing within a 100m diameter target zone – a technology that could prove to be a powerful tool for future exploration of possible sources of fuel, water and oxygen.