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Japan’s moon lander has resumed operations, the space agency said on Twitter (formerly Twitter), indicating that power has been restored. “Last evening we succeeded in establishing communications with SLIM and resumed operations,” JAXA wrote on the microblogging site.
“We immediately began scientific observations with the MBC, and have successfully acquired the first illumination for 10-band observations,” the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said, referring to the lander’s multiband spectroscopic camera.
The agency also posted an image taken by the probe of a “toy poodle” on X, a rock seen near the lander.
Earlier this month, the touchdown made Japan only the fifth country to achieve a soft lunar landing, after the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India.
But after the Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon (SLIM) touched down, JAXA said it could not confirm that the lightweight craft’s solar batteries were generating power.
SLIM, intended to engage very small targets, is a lightweight spacecraft about the size of a passenger vehicle. It was using “pinpoint landing” technology that promised far greater control than any previous moon landing.
Whereas most previous probes had used landing zones about 10 kilometers (six miles) wide, SLIM had a target of only 100 meters (330 ft).
The project was the fruit of two decades of work by JAXA on precision technology.
JAXA has stated that the main goal of the mission is to test new landing technology that will allow Moon missions to “land where we want, not where it is easy to land.” Origin of the Moon, including analysis of minerals with a special camera.
SLIM, equipped with pads to cushion the impact, was aimed to land near the Shioli Crater, an area covered with volcanic rock.
The closely watched mission came just 10 days after a US private company’s Moon mission suffered a fuel leak in the spacecraft hours after launch.
SLIM was launched in September on a Mitsubishi Heavy H2A rocket. It initially orbited Earth and entered lunar orbit on 25 December.
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Published: Jan 29, 2024, 06:23 am IST
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