Moon landing successful, but Japan will be satisfied with it. For the first time, the country landed a spacecraft on the Moon. SLIM, that’s its name, touched down on our satellite this Friday afternoon, January 19, but not in a good way. This still remains an achievement, since until now, only a handful of states have succeeded in such a mission: the United States, Russia, China and India.
1 min
Holding your breath at 380,000 kilometers… For each mission of this type, it’s the same story: engineers with their noses glued to the screens, scrutinizing the data sent by their probe as it descends.
Usually the story ends badly.
But not this time, SLIM, a lander developed by Jaxa, the Japanese Space Agency, continued to transmit after hitting the ground. Not in the best condition though, his solar panels didn’t generate any electricity, but he arrived alive and that’s all that matters. This was the main challenge: to land with a precision of less than 100 meters, to compare with the margin of error of the order of a kilometer of other missions. Which earned SLIM the nickname lunar sniper.
The machine was also supposed to do science; geology in this case. Located in the Shioli crater, we find rocks from ancient lava flows, the study of which could tell us about the composition of the interior of the Moon. Without a way to recharge the batteries, it seems compromised, but Jaxa assures that it will try to collect as much data as possible.
Read alsoJapanese rocket takes off with lunar lander