Japan's hopes of becoming the fifth country to soft-land a working spacecraft on the moon hit a snag on Friday when mission controllers announced the rover was unable to generate electricity after touchdown.
The lunar exploration smart lander (Slim) was testing new technology for pinpoint landings when the rover touched down just after 3pm UK time after a seemingly perfect approach and descent. A problem occurred in the mission.
The space agency had received signals from Slim and the small rover it had released just before touchdown, but a problem with the lander's solar panels meant it was operating solely on existing battery power. Officials said the lander's solar panels may not have been tilted toward the sun correctly.
“Slim is currently running solely on battery power and is prioritizing data transmission to Earth,'' Hitoshi Kuninaka, director of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Space Research Laboratory, said at a press conference held on the 2nd. he told reporters. A few hours after the lander landed.
The lander's batteries are expected to run out within hours, but if the sun's movements over the next few weeks illuminate the solar cells, it could generate electricity onboard.
The space agency believes Slim made a successful soft landing, but it will take about a month to confirm whether the lander landed within 100 meters of its target site near Shiori Crater, just south of the lunar equator. It is expected that it will take some time. Mission.
JAXA said if the spacecraft achieves the expected accuracy, it would mark a transition from the era of “landing where you can” to the era of “landing where you want.” Such a high-precision landing is critical for future lunar exploration.
Although it is unclear how serious the problem with the solar panels is, the failure is a disappointment for JAXA. JAXA has abandoned its first attempt to land on the moon in 2022 after losing contact with the hospitality lander. Last year, a private lunar exploration mission from Tokyo-based company iSpace crash-landed on the moon's surface.
Slim entered lunar orbit on Christmas Day after a fuel-efficient, multi-month journey to the moon. At around 3pm UK time on Friday, it began a “powered descent sequence” that used AI-based image recognition to identify patterns of craters on the surface and pinpoint the landing site.
Data from the spacecraft suggested a stable descent and landing, and all seemed to be going well, but officials were initially unable to confirm the condition of the lander when it reached the surface.
Moon exploration is regaining support from major space agencies in a bid to return humans to the surface and exploit the water and other resources there. However, while the Soviet Union and the United States both successfully performed soft landings in the 1960s, the Soviet Union's Luna 24 mission in 1976 was the last to land a soft landing until China's Chang'e 3 landed in 2013. India becomes the fourth country to join the elite club with the Chandrayaan-3 lander in 2023.
However, landing on the moon is by no means easy. On Thursday, the U.S. civilian lunar lander Peregrine fell to Earth and burst into flames over the South Pacific Ocean after suffering a fuel leak shortly after her liftoff. Last year, Russia's Luna 25 spacecraft crash-landed on the moon, nearly 60 years after the Soviet Union's Luna 9 made the first soft touchdown on the moon.
Just before landing, Slim released two palm-sized lunar orbiters, or Levs. The first, his Lev-1, was designed to fly around, take measurements with onboard thermometers, radiation monitors, and tilt sensors, and transmit signals back to Earth. The second, a ball-shaped mini rover designed in collaboration with Takara Tomy, the toy company that developed Transformers, uses the same shape-changing technology to snap open to reveal two cameras and two hemispheres on wheels. It changes to
For mission controllers, any science that can be performed on a mission is a bonus. One hope is that onboard cameras will study the mantle material exposed at the landing site to see if it supports the theory that the moon was formed in a giant collision with Earth.
Catherine Joy, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Manchester who studies lunar samples from the Apollo mission, said the fact that Slim was sending and receiving signals meant Japan was the fifth country to achieve a soft landing on the moon. He said it was implied. “That's great news,” she said. “However, the solar panels are not charging as planned. What this means for the mission's longevity and achievement of its science goals will become clearer in the coming hours and days.”
