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First image of the moon and the lunar surface as seen from the SLIM Jaxa lander
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA – After arriving in orbit around the Moon on December 25, 2023, Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) lunar lander has beamed back the first image of the lunar surface. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has released a monochrome but highly detailed image of the lunar surface. It can be seen that the moon has crater pockets, and the image has been uploaded to the X JAXA account.
This image was taken after the spacecraft was successfully inserted into lunar orbit on Monday (12/25/2023) at 2:51 a.m. EST (2:51 p.m. WIB).
“SLIM successfully completed main engine injection at 16.51 JST (Japan Time) and successfully entered lunar orbit! “Below is an image sent by SLIM near the Moon,” JAXA officials wrote.
SLIM launches on September 6, 2023 in conjunction with JAXA’s X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM). Meanwhile, XRISM remains in orbit around Earth, carrying out its mission to study cosmic X-ray sources.
SLIM leaves Earth on an elliptical orbit and orbits the Moon approximately every 6.4 hours. This orbit brought the lander as close as possible to the lunar surface at a distance of about 373 miles (600 kilometers), and the spacecraft swung 2,485 miles (4,000 kilometers) from the moon.
The 8.8-foot (2.7-meter) spacecraft is scheduled to land on the moon on January 24, 2024. If the SLIM moon landing is successful, Japan will become the fifth country to land successfully on the month, after the Soviet Union, the United States, China and India.
After successfully landing on the moon, SLIM will verify the technology required for landing on the moon and also on the planets of the solar system and carry out close-range studies of the lunar surface using small probes.
“By creating the SLIM lander, people will make a qualitative change to be able to land where we want, and not just where it is easy to land, as was the case before,” the space agency wrote in their mission description.
“In this way, it would be possible to land on planets where resources are more scarce than on the Moon,” they wrote again.
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