WEB DESK
Japan’s Moon lander has resumed operations after being shut for a week due to a power supply issue. After nine days of uncertainty following its landing, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency successfully established communication with Smart Lander to investigate Moon SLIM, allowing the resumption of scientific operations. It could not generate power when it landed on 20th January as the solar cells pointed away from the sun. The spacecraft ran on battery power for several hours before authorities decided to turn it off to allow for a possible recovery of electricity when the angle of sunlight changed.
JAXA said it re-established contact with the lander last night, indicating that the glitch had been fixed. Its solar cells are working again after a shift in lighting conditions that allowed it to catch sunlight. With the SLIM spacecraft, Japan became only the fifth country to achieve a soft touchdown on the moon after the US, the former Soviet Union, China, and India.
JAXA has said that this mission’s main goal is to test new landing technology that would allow moon missions to land where one wants to, rather than where it is easy to land. Lander will analyze the composition of rocks in its search for clues about the origin of the moon.
The Slim mission came after several earlier attempts by Japan failed, including one by the start-up iSpace, which saw its lunar lander crash when its onboard computer became confused about its altitude above the Moon. Statistically, it has proven very hard to land on the Moon. Only about half of all attempts have succeeded. Earlier this month, a US spacecraft launched by a private operator ended its lunar mission in flames over the Pacific.