2024-03-28 03:47:48
The SLIM probe communicated new images of the satellite after surviving its second lunar night, the Japanese agency Jaxa announced on its social networks.
The Japanese SLIM probe woke up again after surviving the freezing temperatures of its second lunar night, which lasts two Earth weeks, and transmitted new images, the Japanese space agency (Jaxa) announced this Thursday, March 28.
“We received a response from SLIM last night and confirmed (that it) had successfully passed its second lunar night,” Jaxa said on the X account dedicated to its module, which had made a historic moon landing for Japan at the end of January.
“As the sun was still high in the sky last night and the equipment was hot, the navigation camera rushed to take the usual landscape photos for a short time,” Jaxa added.
The agency also posted a black and white photo of the rocky surface of a lunar crater taken by its probe.
A third awakening
According to the agency, the data collected also shows that some of SLIM’s temperature sensors and battery cells are starting to fail, but the main functions appear to be holding up.
This is the third awakening in total for SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon), which had a very high precision moon landing on January 20, making Japan the fifth country to successfully land on the Earth’s natural satellite after the United States, the USSR, China and India.
However, due to a motor problem in the last tens of meters of its descent, SLIM landed at an angle, depriving its west-facing photovoltaic cells of sunlight.
After an initial period of inactivity of around ten days and a first awakening, the probe was placed in hibernation and survived its first lunar night, before being put back into sleep at the beginning of March.
SLIM landed in a small crater less than 300 meters in diameter, called Shioli. Before being turned off, the machine was able to land its two mini-rovers normally, supposed to carry out analyzes of rocks coming from the internal structure of the Moon (the lunar mantle), which is still very poorly understood.
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