1705899179
Congratulations from NASA
“It is unlikely that the solar panels have failed. “It is possible that they will not be directed in the direction originally planned,” he said during a press conference. “If the descent had not been successful, it would have crashed at a very high speed. If this were the case, all functionality of the probe would be lost,” he noted. “But data is sent to Earth.”
An illustration depicting the SLIM lander. — © JAXA HANDOUT / keystone-sda.ch
SLIM is one of many lunar missions recently launched by countries and private companies. But so far only the USA, the Soviet Union, China and, more recently, India have managed to land on the moon.
Also read: In 2024 on the way to the moon, Mars, Europa and the asteroids
The head of the American space agency NASA, Bill Nelson, sent his “congratulations (to Japan) for becoming the fifth country in history to successfully land on the moon.” “We value our partnership in the cosmos and our continued collaboration,” he added.
Jaxa hopes to analyze the data collected during the lunar landing to determine whether the spacecraft achieved its goal of landing within 100 meters of its target. SLIM landed in a small crater called Shioli, less than 300 meters in diameter, and was supposed to conduct analyzes on the ground from there.
Reaching the moon remains a major technological challenge
The two mini-rovers carried by SLIM were launched normally, Jaxa said, including a spherical probe called SORA-Q, barely larger than a tennis ball and capable of changing shape to move around the lunar soil. It was developed by Jaxa in collaboration with Japanese toy giant Takara Tomy. Although the accuracy of the moon landing remains to be confirmed, “I consider the mission a great success,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Several problems could potentially be the cause of the solar panel problem, he told AFP. “A loose cable, a misconnected cable, or the lander could be upside down and not see the sun for some reason,” suggested Jonathan McDowell.
Also read: An American lunar lander disappeared into the Earth’s atmosphere
More than 50 years after man’s first steps on the moon – by the Americans in 1969 – it has once again become the subject of a global race. In addition to the USA and China, Russia also dreams of regaining the space glory of the USSR, in particular by joining forces with China and India, which landed on the moon for the first time last summer. Japan’s first two attempts to land on the moon failed.
In 2022, the Jaxa Omotenashi probe aboard the American Artemis-1 mission suffered a fatal battery failure shortly after it was ejected into space. And in April 2023, a lunar lander from the young private Japanese company ispace crashed on the lunar surface after missing the gentle descent.
Reaching the moon remains a huge technological challenge even for the major space powers: The private American company Astrobotic, acting on behalf of NASA, announced on Thursday that its Peregrine lander was intentionally destroyed and probably disintegrated during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere before he has achieved his goal objective. NASA has also postponed the next two missions of its major lunar return program, Artemis, by almost a year to September 2025 and September 2026.
Also read: Sending the ashes of the deceased to the moon enrages Navajos
#Japanese #space #module #lands #moon #risks #quickly #running #power