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January 30, 2024
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After a nine-day shutdown, the inverted lunar lander received enough sunlight to power up again.
The lander was photographed upside down on the lunar surface.
After being stuck without power for more than a week, Japan’s lunar lander woke up and began taking images of the lunar surface.
On January 28, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) reestablished contact with the Moon Intelligent Research Lander (SLIM), which landed on the side of a crater near the Moon’s equator on January 20. . “Last night communication with SLIM was successfully established and operations resumed,” JAXA announced in a mail on X (formerly Twitter).
SLIM landed on the Moon’s surface about 55 meters from its original target, making it the most precise landing ever achieved. Days later, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the lander on the Moon from 80 kilometers high.
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But the landing wasn’t entirely smooth, as one of the probe’s two engines probably lost thrust just 50 meters above the surface, says Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “It started to go sideways because the two engines were unbalanced.”
In an image captured by a robot that SLIM managed to deploy during its descent (a baseball-sized robot with two cameras), the lander could be seen upside down. Its solar cells were also pointed away from the Sun, which meant they could not generate enough power to power SLIM’s instruments and communications equipment. The twisted lander was forced to run on battery power for nearly three hours. When the lander’s battery reached 12%, JAXA cut power to SLIM to increase its chances of recharging when the Sun moved to a more favorable position.
Charging the lander likely occurred because sunlight changed direction and was directed toward the lander’s solar cells, allowing them to begin generating power, McDowell says. The return of SLIM demonstrates its technological resilience. “The systems are robust enough that they can be turned off and then reactivated once they receive some sunlight.”
Shortly after he woke up, SLIM’s multiband camera, its only scientific instrument, captured an image of a field covered in rocks. The SLIM team named the rocks after dog breeds, including a nearby one they labeled a “toy poodle” and a more distant one they called a “shiba inu,” a famous Japanese breed. The camera will scan the lunar surface for traces of a mineral called olivine, which could help answer questions about the origins of the Moon.
SLIM’s bumpy landing offers lessons for future missions, such as ideas on how to better design propulsion systems, McDowell says. But landing within 100 meters of your target site is an achievement in itself, he adds. “Even if he hadn’t come back to life, I would have called it a super successful mission,” McDowell says.
A JAXA spokesperson said SLIM will continue taking images of the lunar surface until daylight on the Moon fades at the end of January. In addition to revealing more clues about the Moon’s chemical makeup, the lander’s second wind allows the team to see how long SLIM can survive before lunar night falls, McDowell adds.
For now, the SLIM team will continue analyzing the data collected during the probe’s landing. “We believe that the success of the moon landing will be used in future lunar exploration missions,” says the JAXA spokesperson.
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on January 29, 2024.
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