Last Friday, Japan achieved a soft landing on the moon for the first time in the country’s history. Thus, it reached a milestone in space. It also became the fifth country to accomplish this feat at the same time. But there is a problem. The spacecraft will not be able to continue its mission as planned. Here are the details…
Japanese spacecraft SLIM upside down on the Moon!
Japan made history last week by soft landing on the Moon, becoming the 5th country to share this achievement. However, things did not go as planned. Shortly after landing, Japan’s space agency JAXA announced that the Smart Lander to Investigate the Moon (SLIM) was having problems with its solar cells.
- Look what Elon Musk’s brain chip company did a year ago!
- Tesla recalls nearly 200,000 vehicles in the US
So he confirmed that the mission could not proceed as planned. The team is now considering its next move. To do so, it has shut down the lander to preserve what little battery life the spacecraft has left.
In another development shared on Thursday, the Japanese Space Agency JAXA reported that the spacecraft was upside down on the lunar surface. Researchers believe that this problem was caused by the failure of one of SLIM’s main engines during the last landing. Unfortunately, this has gone down in history as an unfortunate consequence of an unstable landing.
SLIM has deployed a robot called the Lunar Exploration Vehicle 2 (LEV-2) to the lunar surface. This autonomous robot plans to explore the lunar surface. JAXA shared an image of the overturned spacecraft towed by this autonomous robot.
The mission team did not characterize this situation as entirely negative. Japan’s space agency JAXA has publicly announced that SLIM’s solar cells are facing west. This is a very important development. Because when the sun sets in this direction in the coming days, energy production will continue. Therefore, it also stated that the possibility of saving the lander is high.
