Japanese spacecraft 'shuts down' after 3 hours of landing on the Moon

Nearly three hours after the Moon landing, the Japanese spacecraft stopped operations to wait for recovery when the Sun shone on its solar panels, JAXA said today.

Simulation of the SLIM spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. Photo: JAXA — Simulation of the SLIM spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. Photo: *JAXA*

The Smart Lander for Investigation of the Moon (SLIM), or Moon Sniper, successfully landed on the Moon at 10:20 p.m. on January 19 ( Hanoi time), making Japan the fifth country to land a spacecraft on Earth's natural satellite. However, after SLIM landed, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) could not confirm that the spacecraft's solar panels were generating electricity.

Nearly three hours after the historic landing, experts “turned off” SLIM, allowing the spacecraft to recover as the sun shone on its solar panels. Before remotely shutting down the lander, mission control received visual and technical data from the landing and from the lunar surface.

"We felt relieved and started to get excited after confirming that we had collected a lot of data. According to the telemetry data, SLIM's solar array is facing west. If sunlight hits the Moon from the west in the future, we believe there is a chance to produce energy and we are preparing for recovery," JAXA shared.

JAXA disconnected SLIM's battery shortly before 1 a.m. on January 20, with about 12 percent power remaining, to avoid hampering future restarts. The agency is conducting a detailed analysis of the data to determine whether the spacecraft achieved its goal of landing within 100 meters of the designated location.

SLIM is targeting a crater where the mantle – the deeper layer of the Moon, usually located below the crust – is thought to be exposed. By analyzing rocks there, JAXA hopes to unravel the mysteries of the Moon’s potential water resources, which are key to building bases on the celestial body.

SLIM’s two small robots were also successfully deployed, one equipped with a transmitter and the other designed to move around the lunar surface and send images back to Earth. The mini-robot is only slightly larger than a tennis ball and can change shape.

JAXA also said today that they are preparing to make further announcements this week on the mission results and the status of the SLIM spacecraft. According to experts at JAXA, although not everything went according to plan, they have obtained many results and are happy with the successful landing.

SLIM is one of a new crop of lunar missions being launched by governments and private companies some five decades after the first human lunar landing. Many spacecraft have crashed and contact has been lost. To date, only four other countries, besides Japan, have successfully landed spacecraft on the Moon: the United States, the Soviet Union, China and most recently, India.

Thu Thao (According to AFP )

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